Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[MADAM SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — HOME DEPARTMENT

The Secretary of State was asked—

Police (Administrative Work)

Helen Jones: If he will make a statement on progress in reducing the amount of administrative work required of police officers. [69104]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Kate Hoey): Good progress is being made in reducing the burden and in streamlining the management of administrative tasks. Developments following the Masefield scrutiny have significantly reduced the number of forms that the police must prepare for prosecuting straightforward cases in magistrates courts. More recently, pilots of new measures recommended in the Narey review of delay in the criminal justice system have introduced further streamlining.

Helen Jones: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. Recently, when I went out on patrol with my local police, I saw at first hand the heavy demand on police officers and the response of members of the public when they were dealing with a police officer whom they knew. Can my hon. Friend assure me that the reduction in administrative burdens on the police will lead to more police being devoted to front-line duties, which is what both they and my constituents want?

Kate Hoey: My hon. Friend is right. All of us learn a great deal when we go out and spend time with our local police. The Cheshire police in her constituency are doing well in civilianising the police force; 39 police personnel have been civilianised. That has increased the amount of money that is available to put into front-line and mainstream policing. We are determined to ensure that the administrative burden on our police is reduced to that which is necessary.

Mr. Graham Brady: To what extent will police time be occupied in fulfilling the requirements of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, not just in the preparation of audits, which has largely already been completed, but in future?

Kate Hoey: Clearly, the hon. Gentleman will join us in hoping that, if the Act works as it is meant to work—

we are sure that it will—crime will be reduced, so the amount of time that police spend on working on the requirements will also be reduced. Under present arrangements, there is considerable duplication in administration between the police and the Crown Prosecution Service. Those are the sorts of things that the reviews have worked towards trying to minimise. That is what I hope that we will be able to do.

Mr. Ken Maginnis: Has the Home Department considered the amount of administrative time that is spent in following up malicious complaints against the police? Has it considered how it might bite back, so to speak, against those who maliciously try to disrupt policing? Has the Home Office considered the amount of time and money that is spent because of malicious complaints? What steps does it intend to take to counter that?

Kate Hoey: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. Clearly, malicious complaints, or abuse of the system, which does happen, is something that no one can support. It is a crime—a criminal offence—to waste police time. I hope that police forces throughout the United Kingdom are ensuring that, where it is possible to prosecute people who have done that, they do so.

Mr. David Kidney: Will my hon. Friend join me in congratulating Staffordshire police on their recent launch of the new Starnet radio communication system, which was jointly procured and is jointly used by Staffordshire fire and rescue service? Does she agree that such collaborative works between emergency services give opportunities for administrative savings? Will she look favourably on bids from Staffordshire police for limited Home Office funds for similar innovative and successful collaborations?

Kate Hoey: Yes. Clearly, any collaborative work, and the work to which my hon. Friend has referred, is to be welcomed and commended. We look forward to more such innovative initiatives throughout the country.

Police Grants

Sir Sydney Chapman: What representations have been made to him in response to the announcement on provisional police grants for 1999–2000. [69105]

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Jack Straw): I received 40 written representations on the provisional police grant allocations that I announced to the House on 2 December. The Minister of State, Home Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, South (Mr. Boateng), subsequently met representatives from seven police authorities. I met right hon. and hon. Members from Kent and, while on an official visit to Falmouth. talked to the chief constable of Devon and Cornwall police about the matter. Final allocations of police grant for 1999–2000 were set out in the police grant report for England and Wales, which was approved by the House on 4 February.

Sir Sydney Chapman: I am grateful to the Home Secretary for that reply. Has he made any estimate of how


much of the increase of 2.7 per cent. in police grant funding that is to take place next year will be swallowed up by the ever-increasing commitments to police pensions, which are unfunded? If he is relying on the 2 per cent. efficiency savings that he expects next year, how does that square with the Audit Commission's view that further efficiency savings can be only 0.5 per cent. at most?

Mr. Straw: The continuing burden on police funds of the costs of pensions, which are pay as you go, is worrying to, I think, all hon. Members on both sides of the House, but the actual burden is taken account of in setting the formula for individual authorities. That is one of the reasons why the amount that is allocated varies from one force to another. I am satisfied that police forces can meet their 2 per cent. efficiency targets on top of that. I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's assertion on the belief of the Audit Commission. The commission has made it quite clear—not least in its latest publication "Fire and Police Performance Indicators"—that there is very substantial scope for efficiency savings, and that there is no relationship at all between the amount spent per head in an area and the effectiveness of the police service.

Angela Smith: Will the Home Secretary assure the House that additional resources given to police are used to fight crime, and that any efficiency savings police are able to make are ploughed back into police forces for use in implementing crime prevention strategies?

Mr. Straw: Under the Police and Magistrates' Courts Act 1994, allocation of resources within an overall total is a matter for chief constables. Therefore, although I very much hope that what my hon. Friend desires will happen, I cannot guarantee it. Plainly, everyone in Basildon, in Essex, and across the country will expect that the resources released by efficiency savings are used for front-line operational police officers.

Sir Norman Fowler: In regard to the previous answer, is the Home Secretary considering setting targets for recruitment of police officers from ethnic minorities?

Mr. Straw: Yes, I am; I made that quite clear to the Home Affairs Committee last Tuesday, when I gave evidence to it. I should also make it clear—as I have in the past—that we are talking about targets and not about quotas of the type that were set, quite unsatisfactorily, in America. We want targets with a single method of entry and of qualification, regardless of people's ethnic status. Despite the progress that has been made in some forces—in recent years, pre-eminently in the Metropolitan police—I do not believe that it is satisfactory that, whereas 8 per cent. of our population are from the ethnic minorities, only a little over 2 per cent. of our police are from the ethnic minorities.

Sir Norman Fowler: If the Home Secretary is pursuing that policy, how is he able to continue saying that he has no view on police recruitment generally? Is it not a fact that police strength increased by 15,000 under the previous, Conservative Government? If he is going to

pursue the policy that he has just stated, should he not now take responsibility for falling police strengths across the country?

Mr. Straw: I think that, in the trade, that is described as a non sequitur. There is no connection whatever between the fact that, under an Act passed by the previous Administration, the establishment of police forces is now a matter for chief constables and my setting of targets for ethnic minority recruitment—with the overwhelming backing of police authorities, most chief constables and the public. What we have to hear from the right hon. Gentleman is whether he supports the policies that I am implementing and that are designed to ensure that the police service more accurately reflects the ethnic background of the people of this country as a whole.

Mr. Barry Jones: May I thank my right hon. Friend for the letter that my hon. Friend the Minister of State, recently sent to me, and ask him whether he accepts that the North Wales police authority has delivered a very high standard of policing, which is both very successful and very professional? Does he agree that our communities, particularly on Deeside, very much value their local police station? Is he also aware that my constituents are glad that five of our police stations are not to close, and that there was particular rejoicing in the town of Buckley when its residents learned that their station was not to close?

Mr. Straw: I am very glad to learn that my Minister of State has produced satisfaction—which does not surprise me, given the qualities that he brings to his job.

Mr. Tim Boswell: What plans he has for achieving greater equity in funding between police forces. [69106]

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Jack Straw): Funding is allocated between police forces in England and Wales by means of a needs-based formula. The formula is designed to be a fair means of distributing resources. However, I have commissioned two pieces of independent research to determine whether the formula can be improved.

Mr. Boswell: Although that specific answer is very welcome, will not the Home Secretary concede—if I concede it to him—that there is a case for special action on, for example, the Met and centralised services, such as criminal intelligence? Will he concede also that there is concern, particularly in county forces, about the slow wind down of the establishment element, about the unsolved pensions problem and about their overall funding? Does he agree that the result is that the chief constable in Northamptonshire—which has a well-known, lean and efficient police force—will be required to dispose of the services of 43 officers next year?

Mr. Straw: The formula is not perfect, and we must go on trying to refine it. Although we will never reach perfection, hopefully the formula can more accurately reflect relative needs in different areas, over time. However, decisions about the number of officers to be deployed or on the establishment are a matter for chief officers. For Northamptonshire, the grant for 1999–2000


is increasing by 3.8 per cent.—that is 50 per cent. up on the average, and follows an increase of nearly 5 per cent. last year. Northamptonshire has done pretty well compared with other forces.

Ms Hazel Blears: The 2.9 per cent. increase this year for Greater Manchester will be challenging for us. However, I am delighted that the police authority has managed to find £10.5 million of efficiency savings, and that it has confirmed that it can live within the budget without cuts in front-line policing. Can I commend to my right hon. Friend the innovative new best-value pilot in Salford, which looks to get the maximum value for money out of every pound spent on policing? Will my right hon. Friend confirm that a fundamental look at police functions could ensure that the police concentrate on key issues—protecting the public and making our communities safer places in which to live?

Mr. Straw: I can confirm that. It is important that police resources are used wisely and not wasted. It remains the case that, as the Audit Commission has spelt out:
Overall, the police service is spending more per head in real terms each year, but there is still no direct correlation between increased spending and improved performance at the level of individual forces.
As the Conservative Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr. Davis), has said, there is enormous variation in the performance of otherwise similar police forces. It is a matter for each force and authority to ensure that in this public service, as in every other, we secure best value for the public.

Dr. Vincent Cable: Does the Home Secretary accept that there are difficulties with the Metropolitan police, which has accounted for three quarters of the loss of police numbers since the Government came into office and has exceptional recruitment difficulties? Does he agree that the process by which the funding formula is arrived at—which gives equal weight to the various police authorities—heavily discriminates against a major metropolitan authority such as London?

Mr. Straw: I am afraid that I do not accept that. There has been an adjustment—certainly since I became Home Secretary—to take account of the special pressures and demands on the Metropolitan police force. I have increased the amount from £130 million in 1997 to £150 million last year, and to more than £170 million next year. The criticism that I have received has been from provincial forces who say that I have been too generous to the Metropolitan police—not too mean.

Ms Jackie Lawrence: Will the Home Secretary confirm that one of the two pieces of independent research being carried out relates to the sparsity element of the needs-based formula? If, as the Dyfed Powys police force believes, the research shows that there are considerable extra costs in policing rural areas, will the sparsity element of the formula be adjusted to take that into account in future?

Mr. Straw: Yes, I can confirm that. I understand that this is of particular importance to constituencies such as

that of my hon. Friend in west Wales, which I had the privilege of visiting in 1997. We are carrying out two pieces of research—one on the effects of sparse population on pressures on policing, and the other on the pressures on police in inner urban areas. I hope—although I cannot guarantee—that there will be some resolution to those different but conflicting pressures.

Mr. John Greenway: When does the Home Secretary expect to publish the findings of that external research, particularly the research into sparsity? Does he agree that many of our small and rural police forces are under severe financial pressure? He mentioned eight the other day, and all those that he criticised were rural. We hope that he has checked up on how bad things are. Those forces have virtually no flexibility to deal with sudden shocks in the grant formula. Many are already cutting recruitment, leaving people in rural areas feeling betrayed by the Government. Will the Home Secretary assure us that there will be no further cuts in the budget for rural communities? Will he also assure us that provision to cover any additional and exceptional need will be quickly implemented?

Mr. Straw: I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his birthday. He is 53 today.
We have shown our concern about the pressures on rural forces by keeping the sparsity factor in the police formula, even though significant questions have been raised about its reliability. We shall continue with that policy until we have the results of the research, which I have been promised shortly. I shall write to tell the hon. Gentleman the outcome as soon as I discover it.

Burglaries

Mr. Andrew Dismore: What measures he proposes to protect people from repeat burglaries. [69107]

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Paul Boateng): My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary recently announced his intention to implement in December section 4 of the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997, which provides for mandatory minimum sentences of three years' imprisonment for those convicted for a third time of committing domestic burglary. That supports the action that the Government are already taking to reduce and prevent burglary through the crime reduction programme and the work of the local crime and disorder partnerships.

Mr. Dismore: Will my hon. Friend join me in congratulating the Metropolitan police on the fact that levels of burglary in the capital are at their lowest since 1980? In particular, will he congratulate my local police service in Barnet, which has achieved a 26 per cent. reduction in burglary over two years through a multi-agency approach?
Is my hon. Friend aware of the recent survey by the Met, which showed that Londoners' No. 1 priority for policing is combating burglary? I welcome the Government's commitment to taking firm action against repeat burglars, who cause such misery when they prey on our constituents' homes, by giving the courts the powers that they need to deal with them.

Mr. Boateng: I am happy to recognise and congratulate my hon. Friend's local police for their excellent work on


burglary. The Met is leading the way in targeted policing to combat burglary. The Government are concentrating on ensuring swift and condign punishment for those who are caught and convicted of burglary because of the harm that they do. We are doing all that we can to support and encourage the nuts and bolts measures on the ground that the police and public can take together to prevent burglary.

Mr. John Bercow: Why does the Minister not recognise that the early release of prisoners on the home detention curfew scheme, many of whom are burglars, will make a mockery of the Government's attempts to convince the public that they are cracking down on serious burglars?

Mr. Boateng: When will the hon. Gentleman learn not to try to score cheap party political points on a measure that enjoyed cross-party support on the Home Affairs Committee? After we discharge prisoners, we ensure that we retain the capacity to supervise them. They are punished in a condign way when they are caught. We are concentrating on making sure that there are programmes in prisons to prevent reoffending and on supervising prisoners on release. The Conservatives never did that when they had the stewardship of the criminal justice system.

Mr. Bill O'Brien: I thank my hon. Friend for his response on how burglars will be dealt with. The victims of crime are usually those who cannot afford the resources to protect their property. Are the Government able to help secure the homes of people on low incomes, old people in particular, to try to ensure that they are defended against burglars?

Mr. Boateng: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is why we are applying about £50 million over three years to tackle burglary and to effect target hardening to ensure that older people, in particular, and all vulnerable victims of crime in high-burglary areas get the assistance that they need to deter and prevent burglary. That holds out the prospect of about 2 million households receiving help that they never would have got had that lot opposite returned to power at the general election.

Police Numbers (Sussex)

Mr. Norman Baker: What assessment he has made of the adequacy of police numbers in Sussex. [69108]

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Paul Boateng): My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has made no assessment of police numbers in Sussex. Under legislation passed by the previous Government in 1994, it is for the chief constable to determine the number of police officers in the force, within the resources available to him or her.

Mr. Baker: I hear what the Minister says, but I hope that he shares my concern that a recent survey demonstrated that only 15 per cent. of people felt that there were enough police on the beat. I hope that he feels that he ought to do something about that. Before the general election, the Labour party was very keen to

criticise the previous Government on police numbers. Is it the case that the previous Government were responsible for police numbers then and that the police authorities are responsible for them now?

Mr. Boateng: The Lib Dems are trying to have it both ways, as usual. As the hon. Gentleman well knows, the reality is that the number of police on the ground is an operational matter for the chief constable. The new Labour Government have provided an additional £1.24 billion for policing. We are also enabling the constabulary in Sussex to reinvest its 2 per cent. efficiency savings in front-line policing. That is warmly welcomed in Sussex. Is it too much to ask the Liberal Democrat party to recognise the good that is being done on the ground, rather than carping on and on about the number of police, which it knows is not the best criterion for reducing and preventing crime?

Mr. Nicholas Soames: I thank the Minister for that thoroughly condign answer. Will he acknowledge that what he says is simply not true and that the news on numbers is not welcomed in Sussex? The hon. Member for Lewes (Mr. Baker) is right to say that it is generally acknowledged in Sussex that there are not enough policemen on the beat, as the Minister himself would have said at the general election.
Will the Minister see to it that the rather exotic number of police required, rightly, to police Gatwick airport in north-west Sussex in no way impinges on the rightful need for more police in the ordinary Sussex police establishment?

Mr. Boateng: I have never associated the hon. Gentleman with exoticism, but, as he raises the issue, I will of course take it up with the chief constable, who will be the first to recognise that it is an operational matter and not one on which it would be proper for me to comment.

Police Pensions

Mr. Richard Ottaway: What plans he has for reform of police pensions. [69109]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Kate Hoey): Following our consultation document of last year on police pensions, work is in hand on detailed proposals for the pension arrangements for new entrants to the service and for changes to the medical retirement procedures. We plan to publish our proposals in the spring. They will be published in advance of implementation to allow for full consultation with the interested parties.

Mr. Ottaway: Does the Minister accept that the total size of the pension package expands year after year, and that it expands incrementally into a fixed budget? Is not the logical conclusion that there will be fewer policemen on the beat, in Sussex, Croydon or anywhere else?

Kate Hoey: No, I do not accept that. As we have said all along, it is up to local police forces to use their resources as they think best to ensure that front-line policing is not affected. As the hon. Gentleman well knows, the predicted need to spend on pensions has gone up from 13.2 to 14.5 per cent. It is up to the police forces


and the chief constables to ensure that police on the beat and on the front line are not affected by the overall settlement.

Mr. Bob Russell: Does the Minister agree that the current operation of police pensions has a direct bearing on front-line police services? Is she aware that, this afternoon, the Essex police authority is considering spending cuts of £7 million, partly brought about by the police pensions fund formula, which means that Essex will have 135 fewer police officers next year, the entire motor cycle fleet will be sold off, there will be less overtime for police officers to tackle crime and the mounted police section will be disbanded? Surely we need to tackle police pensions so that there is more money for front-line police services.

Kate Hoey: We are all aware of the difficult position on the future of pensions. That is precisely why we are conducting a consultation exercise, why a document was published and why we shall consider the issue and make sensible, well-thought-out proposals that will take all those points into consideration. Although the hon. Gentleman believes that his force is particularly harshly affected, I do not accept that. There is a general problem that we need to tackle on a cross-party basis; police pensions are not a party political issue, but a problem that we all have to work towards solving.

Sir Norman Fowler: Is the hon. Lady aware that there are reports that the Home Office is considering punishing police officers who are convicted of serious disciplinary offences by cutting their pension by up to 75 per cent? I do not defend police officers who are found guilty of such offences, but can it be right to use their pension scheme as the penalty for a disciplinary offence?

Kate Hoey: The right hon. Gentleman has been slightly badly briefed on this matter because that is the law at the moment, so exactly that action can be taken.

Mr. David Winnick: Is my hon. Friend aware that many of us are concerned that sexist, racist behaviour does not, in many cases, lead to a loss of pension? If we are to strike out the cancer of racism in the police force, far more action is necessary, including cutting pensions.

Kate Hoey: Clearly, every police officer has to be treated fairly. We are strengthening the position on discipline and the new arrangements from 1 April will take account of all that. The matter is on-going and some changes have already been made. I hope that my hon. Friend will wait to find out how those changes work in practice from 1 April.

Mr. Desmond Swayne: Does the hon. Lady agree that a pension is, in effect, pay deferred and that the question of punishing a police officer by removing his pension entitlement raises profound questions about the rights of property? Although that can be done now, will she inform the House that it will not be done?

Kate Hoey: I am sorry, but the hon. Gentleman seems to be equally badly briefed as his Front-Bench colleague,

the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler). At present, up to 75 per cent. of a police officer's pension can be taken away, so this is not a new proposal that has suddenly been pulled out of a hat; it can happen already.

Asylum Seekers

Mr. Tony McNulty: If he will make a statement on the measures being taken to prevent asylum seekers attempting to enter the United Kingdom illegally by hiding in vehicles. [69112]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Mike O'Brien): We shall tackle the problem of illegal immigration rather than specifically asylum seekers. We are developing increased European and international co-operation to crack down on traffickers. The Immigration and Asylum Bill contains several important provisions, including a civil penalty that will apply to drivers of vehicles found transporting clandestine entrants to Britain.

Mr. McNulty: I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. Does he accept that everyone will welcome a fairer, faster and firmer system for immigrant applicants and asylum seekers? Does he accept that, despite some whingeing in the press, there is widespread support for fining those who bring in illegal immigrants, particularly via freight lorries? The time is past when drivers could turn a blind eye and say, "I did not know what was going on," when there were up to 100 people in the back of a lorry. Now is the time for action for a faster, firmer and fairer system all round.

Mr. O'Brien: My hon. Friend is right: 8,000 illegal immigrants were brought into Britain in the backs of lorries last year, at a cost to the taxpayer of tens of thousands of pounds. Lorry drivers are neglecting to check their loads. It is difficult to resist the idea that most drivers are either culpable, because they accept bribes, or, at best, negligent, because they do not check their loads. The civil penalties of £2,000 per illegal immigrant will concentrate their minds. We do not want to be forced to fine anyone. Indeed, the best result would be that we never have to fine anyone because no illegal immigrants are being brought in.

Mr. James Clappison: How can the Minister lecture lorry drivers in that way, when the Government's message is that they have granted what is in effect an asylum to up to 30,000 asylum seekers? Is it not highly likely that many of those 30,000 are not properly entitled to asylum and may be economic migrants? What sort of message is that sending to other would-be asylum seekers about trying to get into the United Kingdom?

Mr. O'Brien: In 1992–93, the Tory Government made a secret concession that granted exceptional leave to remain to more than 26,000 asylum seekers. Parliament was never informed. That is a greater number than we will involve in our special procedures announced in the White Paper entitled "Fairer, Faster and Firmer—a modern approach to immigration and asylum". Unless we clear the inherited backlog, we cannot create a faster system. The Tory Government left us with so many cases


that it would take five years to train the staff needed and to clear the backlog. The problem is too great and we cannot afford that much time to solve it. We had to take a tough decision, and we have taken it. We expect criticism, but it ill becomes the people who created the problem to complain when we are clearing up their mess.

South Yorkshire Police

Helen Jackson: What discussions he has had with the chief constable of South Yorkshire about the funding of the defence costs for members of the police force involved in civil suits. [69113]

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Paul Boateng): My right hon. Friend has had no discussions with the chief constable on this matter. I understand that the South Yorkshire police authority has set aside from its reserves the sum of £500,000 for legal costs in connection with the Hillsborough disaster. The funding of the defence costs of police officers is entirely a matter for the police authority.

Helen Jackson: My hon. Friend will be aware of the great concern in Liverpool and Sheffield that the South Yorkshire police authority may have acted outside its authority in offering to fund the defence costs in a private prosecution of former police officers Duckenfield and Murray. Who will fund the costs of settling the matter in the High Court? If any expenditure has been unlawfully authorised to date, will my hon. Friend ensure that it will be repaid to the South Yorkshire police authority? Does he agree that the public in South Yorkshire do not deserve to suffer reduced resources now, as a result of shortcomings that led to the tragic loss of life at Hillsborough on 15 April 1989?

Mr. Boateng: The House shares a continuing sense of loss at the tragedy surrounding Hillsborough. The decision of the South Yorkshire police authority is, of course, a matter for that authority. It has decided to stop funding the defence costs of the two former officers. Whether the matter is vires is for the courts to decide, and it is not something on which I wish to comment. Any matters to do with the misuse of funding are the business of the district auditor. However, if it will assist my hon. Friend, I shall write to her in connection with any detailed matters that she might wish me to address.

Mr. Richard Allan: I hope that the Minister will agree that the police authority has behaved properly in recently seeking fresh legal advice and withdrawing the funding for the former officers' defence costs. However, is he aware that the police are worried that, whatever decisions are taken, they may face the prospect of judicial review? Will he consider offering assistance to forces, such as South Yorkshire, when they face judicial review, which is very expensive? Such consideration would have less to do with the local case than with the need to clarify national guidelines. The Hillsborough case has revealed how desperately such clarification is needed.

Mr. Boateng: We are always prepared to look at guidelines and their review whenever matters emerge that

require us to reassess them. Of course, police authorities must act according to Home Office circulars and guidelines, when they are applied. It is clear that section 88 of the Police Act 1996 does not apply to criminal proceedings but, if there is any necessity to tighten or clarify the guidelines, we shall certainly take that on board.
The hon. Gentleman will understand why it would be improper of me to comment on the other matters that he raised if there is any question of judicial proceedings being initiated. However, I shall bear his comments in mind.

Prisoners (Drug Smuggling)

Mr. Bill Rammell: If he will make a statement on the Government's policy towards prisoners who smuggle drugs into prisons. [69114]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. George Howarth): We are committed to reducing the use of illegal drugs in prison. As part of an overall strategy, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary announced proposals on 25 January to introduce a co-ordinated range of measures against both prisoners and visitors who smuggle drugs into prison.

Mr. Rammell: I thank the Minister for that reply. Does he agree that deterrence is the best mechanism by which to stop drugs being smuggled into prison? Evidence suggests that drugs most commonly get into prisons through domestic visits. Where that is proven to have occurred, should not the prison authorities have the ability to ban domestic visits for a set period? Will my hon. Friend ensure that, when such powers become available to the prison authorities from 1 April, they are rigorously enforced to ensure that we continue to see, as we have over the past couple of years, a reduction in the number of drugs smuggled into prisons?

Mr. Howarth: My hon. Friend is quite right to say that restrictions on visits to prisoners are likely to act as a strong deterrent to visitors and prisoners. Visitors found smuggling drugs will normally be banned from visiting the prison for at least three months. Prisoners found to be, or believed to be, engaging in such activity will normally take all visits in closed conditions for a period equivalent to three months in total. Those regulations will be introduced on 1 April, and they will be enforced.

Mr. Edward Garnier: Is not one of the best ways in which to inhibit drug smuggling and trading within prisons to prevent overcrowding? Last week, the Minister was unable to answer my written parliamentary question on that subject, which was designed to find out how many people were sharing three to a cell meant for two prisoners. If the Minister were to visit, among others, Belmarsh prison near Greenwich, he would find a number of prisoners sharing cells in such conditions. If the Minister viewed that problem, he would perhaps learn a little about how to solve the problems of drug smuggling and trading in prisons.

Mr. Howarth: The hon. and learned Gentleman is being somewhat imaginative in making that connection. There are difficulties in disentangling that information and, as I explained in my written answer last week, the statistics are not recorded in the manner that he


suggested. I am satisfied that the problem raised by the hon. and learned Gentleman is not a major one, and that the real problem lies not in what passes between prisoners inside a prison, but in how the drugs get into the prison in the first place. That is the area on which we are right to concentrate our attention. If we followed the logic of the hon. and learned Gentleman, we would bother not with what went into prisons, but about what was circulating in them. Clearly, that would not be equal to the problem.

Mr. Martin Linton: Is my hon. Friend aware that the smuggling of drugs into prison is the cause not only—and obviously—of drug taking, but of a great deal of prisoner-on-prisoner violence and feuding, and a great many tragic suicides in prison? Is he further aware that it causes a great deal of theft outside prison as relatives steal money to buy drugs to smuggle to their drug-taking relatives in prison?

Mr. Howarth: My hon. Friend is right. It is important that we should get two messages across. First, prisoners found guilty, through mandatory drug testing, of trading or using drugs in prison will be punished in serious cases. More importantly, those who visit prisoners should know that, as of 1 April, serious measures will be enforced if they decide to take drugs into prisons. Violence, theft and much else are caused by drugs. We shall not tolerate what has happened in the past in our prisons, and we intend to start dealing with the problem severely.

Crime Detection Rate

Mr. David Amess: What recent representations he has received on the rate of crime detection in the United Kingdom. [69115]

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Jack Straw): We regularly receive representations from hon. Members, members of the public and others about crime issues, including the detection rate.

Mr. Amess: Is the Home Secretary aware that fewer crimes than ever will be detected in Essex as a result of the wholly inadequate funding provided by the Government? Why did the Home Secretary give Essex one of the worst four settlements in the country—an increase of only 1.7 per cent., effectively a cut of £7 million—especially in the light of the extra burdens, costing £1 million, caused by the four extra bank holidays? Why has he got it in for Essex, the very county that was responsible for educating him? Will he pull himself together and give Essex the tools to be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime?

Mr. Straw: I hope that the hon. Gentleman feels better for that rant. Calmly, as an Essex man, I shall give him a few facts which are contrary to his assertions. His claim about Essex's alleged underfunding is wrong. Essex received an increase of 2.9 per cent., which is above, not below, the rate of inflation. Also, there is absolutely no warrant for his claim that, as a result, Essex police officers will detect fewer crimes.
I am astonished that Conservative Members should seek to excuse inefficiency in the police service alone of all public services. When we were in opposition,

Conservatives often—quite rightly—lectured us on the need to secure efficiency in health, education and other local authority services. When one or two of my hon. Friends ill-advisedly went around suggesting that there were to be large cuts in staff and therefore in the outputs and efficiencies as a result of the dreadful Tory cuts, Conservative Ministers were rightly sceptical, and some of us on the Opposition Front Bench used to squirm with embarrassment at the extravagance of the claims made by those behind us.
The same efficiency disciplines must apply to the police service as apply to every other public service, especially against a background in which, as the Audit Commission pointed out in its latest assessment of key performance indicators, it is the police service which, year on year, has had real-terms increases in its inputs, although there is no necessary correlation between the amount of money allocated and the clear-up rates or detection of crime. The police's agenda must now be to raise the level of all services to that of the best.

Mr. Peter L. Pike: I must tell my right hon. Friend that I have a more than particular interest in this matter today, having had my constituency office broken into last night. We talk about the detection rate, but what about the rate of crime reported to the police? Are not many crimes not reported because people feel that there is little point in doing so as nothing will happen?

Mr. Straw: The level of the recording of crime varies considerably as between the types of crime. There is a pretty high level of recording of domestic burglary and of thefts of motor vehicles, not least because many of the items stolen are of high value, and there are insurance consequences of not reporting such thefts. There are relatively low levels of reporting of, for example, theft from cars, as opposed to theft of cars. Overall, the evidence from the British crime survey, which assesses total levels of crime, suggests that the reporting of crimes has increased as people have more confidence in the police to solve those crimes.

Category A Prisoners

Mr. Gordon Prentice: What is the annual cost of keeping a category A inmate in prison. [69116]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. George Howarth): The average annual operating cost per place for 1997–98 in the five dispersal prisons which house the majority of category A prisoners was £38,100, excluding any Prison Service headquarters expenditure. There were 854 category A prisoners on 31 December last.

Mr. Prentice: Does not that figure simply take one's breath away—£08,000 a year each to keep just over 600 category A prisoners? [Interruption.] It costs £23,000 a year to keep every ordinary prisoner in gaol. The hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess) should listen to this because it was under his Government that crime doubled, which led to the explosion in the prison population. Given that this is a Government of targets, does my hon. Friend have a target for bringing the prison population down to more manageable levels? As we are about to consider adding to that population 2,700 people


who may suffer from personality disorders but who have not been convicted, can we have a target for getting the prison population down?

Mr. Howarth: My hon. Friend is well aware that it is not the Home Office or Ministers who convict people and give custodial sentences but the courts. Our job, and that of Parliament, is to ensure that the legal framework is correct so that the courts can operate effectively. The important task is getting the rate of crime down so that courts do not have to have recourse to custodial sentences. In all places and at all times, there will be a need for some type of prison system, but if we can start to defeat crime, the number of people convicted and given custodial sentences will inevitably fall. That is what we have tried to achieve through the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and what all our legislative attention will go on in the coming period. It is right for everyone to get crime down. I am sure that the whole House accepts that and will support our legislation.

Asylum Appeals System

Dr. Norman A. Godman: What steps he is taking to speed up the asylum appeals system. [69117]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Mike O'Brien): The Immigration Asylum Bill will introduce reforms to the appeal system to reduce opportunity for frivolous appeals. Our target is to have appeals processed within four months.

Dr. Godman: My compliments to the Minister for that answer. Is he aware that, in Scotland, fully 30 per cent. of all cases involving immigration appellants are handled by the Scottish Refugee Council, a charitable body that receives no public funding for that legal work? What steps will he take to ensure that such appellants receive legal representation in the courts or will he suggest that this might be a matter for the Scottish Parliament?

Mr. O'Brien: It may or may not be, but we want to ensure that, where possible, those who need legal representation are legally represented. The Refugee Council in England and Wales receives some public funding. It will be a matter for others in due course to review the position of the Scottish Refugee Council. We need to ensure that the legal aid system and the grants issued under section 23 of the Immigration Act 1971, which are given by the Home Office, can respond to the demands on them. We are examining that to ensure that, as far as possible, they can.

Miss Julie Kirkbride: In answer to the hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. McNulty), the Minister said that 8,000 would-be asylum seekers had been found in the backs of lorries. Can he confirm that they have all been deported after being found illegally entering the United Kingdom? If not, how many have been deported?

Mr. O'Brien: I suspect that, under the system that we inherited and under which we still operate, very few have been deported. We inherited substantial backlogs. It takes

years to process asylum cases. The aim of our change to the immigration and asylum system is not only to introduce effective civil penalties to stop people bringing in illegal immigrants in the first place but to ensure that the system processes cases quickly so that we can remove those who need to be removed, unlike what happened under the previous Government.

Asylum Seekers

Mr. John Gunnell: What steps he proposes to take to ensure that new support arrangements for asylum seekers reduce the incentive for economic migrants. [69119]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Mike O'Brien): Cash payments to asylum seekers provide a strong incentive for economic migrants. As a disincentive to economic migration, we have therefore decided that support for asylum seekers in real need should be in kind rather than in cash. However, we are speeding up the decision-making process so that genuine refugees should be on the system for only a very short time.

Mr. Gunnell: I welcome the fact that we are continuing to receive genuine refugees. I also welcome the Minister's reply. Inevitably, there will still be residual costs. Can he assure me that the matter has been discussed with receiving authorities such as Leeds and that a disproportionate share of the costs will not fall on council tax payers?

Mr. O'Brien: As a result of the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996, an enormous burden was placed on local authorities which was not really intended. As part of our reform, we aim to introduce a national system, with a national agency which will take responsibility for the support and accommodation of asylum seekers. Obviously, we will be working very closely with local authorities, to try to ensure, so far as we can, that they are able to recover moneys from national sources, which is where the responsibility should lie. As far as I am able, I give my hon. Friend the reassurance that he seeks. The system that we are trying to create will put most of the burden where it belongs: with the national Government.

Animals (Experiments)

Dr. Phyllis Starkey: What assessment he has made of the reduction of the number of experiments on animals since the ban on testing (a) cosmetics and (b) their ingredients on animals. [69121]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. George Howarth): During 1995 to 1997 inclusive, an average of 130 procedures a year were carried out on animals to test finished cosmetic products, and about 1,900 a year to test the ingredients of those products. The figures for 1998 are being collated. They will include some testing of cosmetic ingredients, as we did not end such testing until November.

Dr. Starkey: I thank my hon. Friend very much for that answer, but ask him to consider the area of necessary


animal experimentation, such as the proper testing of genetically modified food. Is the Home Office insisting that experimental design is always optimised, so that the minimum number of animals are used, consistent with proper scientific results?

Mr. Howarth: Most people would agree with my hon. Friend. Although we seek to minimise the use of animals in all such procedures, some animal usage is necessary in some procedures, such as medical research which can often lead to the saving of human lives or research that ensures people's safety. We shall pursue relevant measures across Europe, rather than risk exporting animal experimentation to countries where, often, less rigorous controls apply. Of course we will ensure that measures are sustainable and do not disadvantage United Kingdom research, medicine and industry, while at the same time ensuring that the public's safety is not compromised. My hon. Friend is right: we must strike a balance between the welfare of animals and the necessary requirements of science, especially medical science. It is a difficult balance to strike, but we are working very hard to do so.

Surrey Probation Service

Mrs. Virginia Bottomley: If he will visit Surrey probation service in Godalming to discuss its performance in relation to its charter mark award. [69122]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. George Howarth): My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary hopes to be able to visit

the service this year. He wrote to the chief probation officer on 25 January to congratulate the service on achieving a 1998 charter mark award.

Mrs. Bottomley: Surrey probation service was very proud to win a charter mark award, which followed it being highly commended two years ago. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will agree that the citizens charter initiative, which was introduced by my right hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major), was an inspired contribution to public services.
Surrey probation service has been commended by the chief inspector for being dynamic, flexible, imaginative and well managed, but is in a dilemma because it has received among the lowest funding settlement in the country, and will have serious problems meeting its superannuation fund commitments. People in Surrey want to know whether the Government have a systematic policy of raiding the home counties. Surrey has received the lowest probation and health service settlements, and £6 million has been taken from its social services budget. Is that part of a consistent Government policy?

Mr. Howarth: We accept entirely that the approach of the right hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major) to charter marks, and so on, was useful. Indeed, we have carried on with it. I echo the right hon. Lady's congratulations to Surrey on its excellent work, but rather than putting a sting in the tail of her supplementary question, she over-egged the pudding. If there is a problem in Surrey, my noble Friend the Minister and I would be more than happy to hear about it. I suspect that she is slightly exaggerating the problem, although we are always willing to receive representations.

Severe Personality Disorders

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Jack Straw): With permission, Madam Speaker, I should like to make a statement on new measures that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and I are proposing in order better to protect the public from dangerous people in our society.
Up to now, we have dealt with those who are capable of committing acts of a serious sexual or violent nature in one of two ways—by conviction and imprisonment through the criminal courts, or by detention on the recommendation of doctors under powers in the Mental Health Acts. There is, however, a group of dangerous, severely personality disordered individuals from whom the public at present are not properly protected, and who are restrained effectively neither by the criminal law nor by the provisions of the Mental Health Acts.
The propensity of such people to commit the most serious sexual and violent acts may be well known and well recorded. Such people may, however, have been convicted only of crimes carrying a limited determinate sentence, and will have to be released from prison at the end of their sentence, even though, for example, they may themselves have warned prison staff of their certainty of recommitting serious offences on their release.
Because current mental health legislation prevents the detention even of a person posing the highest possible risk to the public unless doctors also certify that the condition is treatable, those people remain at large and without the benefit of any attempts at clinical intervention, unless and until they can be convicted of a further offence. In a limited number of cases, such people may not have come to the attention of the criminal justice system at all.
As successive Governments have recognised, this situation is plainly unsatisfactory. As long ago as 1975 an official committee—the Butler committee—recommended that indeterminate, reviewable sentences should be introduced for some of those individuals.
Much more recently, legislation enacted by this and the previous Administration means that increasingly effective conditions can be imposed on some offenders as they are being released from prison into the community. That includes compulsory post-release supervision for prisoners serving one year or more. In such cases, those who breach their licence conditions can be immediately recalled to prison.
Section 2 of the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997, which was passed by the previous Administration and came into force in October 1997, provides for a mandatory life sentence for those convicted of a second serious sexual or violent offence. The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 introduced extended supervision of up to an extra 10 years for sex offenders, and gave the police powers to apply for a sex offender order. However, not all these powers can apply to people who were sentenced before 1992. In recent months, dangerous offenders such as Robert Oliver and others have been released, with no conditions imposed on what they did or on where they lived.
I should therefore like to tell the House today what we are proposing for the short term, and also of our legislative proposals for the medium term. For the short term, we are putting in place an early warning system,

so that local agencies and central Government have the maximum possible time to prepare for a dangerous person's re-entry to the community. Prison and probation services are being asked to provide this information to the Home Office's probation unit.
Similar arrangements are being made through the national health service with hospitals that treat patients detained under the Mental Health Act 1983. A support group in the Home Office probation unit made up of staff from the operational services will be there to assist local agencies to deal with particularly difficult cases. Those arrangements will all build on the work of the multi-agency risk panels that have already been established in many areas.
Those changes will help the system to deal with dangerous people now, but I believe that a new legislative framework for the system is long overdue. As I have explained, under the current provisions of the Mental Health Acts, only some of those severely disordered people can be detained, and then only if the
treatment is likely to alleviate or prevent a deterioration of their condition".
As the House well knows, there is a continuing debate about what treatments, if any, are effective in dealing with such severe personality disorder. However, the protection of the public cannot wait for the outcome of research, which may take many years to complete. Society cannot rely on a lottery in which, through no fault of the courts, some dangerous, severely personality disordered people are sent for a limited time to prison or to hospital while others remain in the community, or return to it, with no interventions whatever.
Subject, therefore, to parliamentary time, the Government propose that there should be new legal powers for the indeterminate but reviewable detention of dangerous personality disordered individuals. These powers would apply whether or not someone was before the courts for an offence. However, the new powers would themselves be exercised by the courts, and not by the Executive, and only where it could be established that the individual had a recognised severe personality disorder and that he or she posed a grave risk to the public.
Depriving individuals of their liberty in such circumstances is a very serious step. The key aim must be to protect the public while meeting the health needs of such individuals; so we will ensure that the process of ordering detention involves a robust system of checks and balances covering both legal and clinical issues. Once in detention, there will be regular, quasi-judicial reviews of the justification for detention continuing. The individuals concerned must have the best possible chance of becoming safe so as to be returned to the community, wherever that is possible. We therefore propose to establish a range of specialist programmes and a new approach to managing the detention of all those detained under the new powers. This approach would involve close operational links with the existing services.
I have outlined for the House what the Government believe is needed, but, because of the complexity of this area, and the seriousness of creating the kind of detention powers that I have described, it will be important for us to consult more widely. This will enable us to ensure both that we have not overlooked any options and that the action we take is effective and measured, commands broad support and is compatible with our obligations


under the European convention. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and I therefore propose to publish in the spring a consultative document that will outline in more detail the nature of the problem and the options for the new framework within which these powers will operate. In the light of responses to that document, we will take final decisions later this year.
We need to find out also why some people develop severe personality disorders and how that can be prevented. We are therefore funding further research, of nearly £1 million over three years. But we know already that severe personality disorder is often associated with large, broken families where abuse has been rife and where children may have been taken into local authority care or have received community-based mental health treatment before then embarking on drug abuse and criminal careers. Those problems will need to be dealt with in any event.
A number of hon. Members on both sides of the House have had to deal with the consequences in their own constituencies of the release of such dangerous, severe personality disordered offenders. I am extremely grateful to them and to local police, probation and health services for the sensitive and responsible way in which they have handled cases in their constituencies involving offenders to whom these measures relate, often in the face of serious and alarmed public concern. I very much hope that this constructive all-party approach will continue and that the proposals that I have outlined will receive wide support inside and outside the House.

Sir Norman Fowler: In judging these proposals, should not our paramount concern be the safety of the public, and especially the safety of children? It cannot be right to have dangerous people in the community when there is a real belief that they may commit serious crimes, particularly when, as in the case of Michael Stone, the person himself seeks secure treatment.
It is clear that there is a range of issues to be decided when it comes to the Government's proposals. That being so, I ask the Home Secretary two particular questions. First, what will be the standard of proof when deciding whether an individual has a recognised severe personality disorder and is a grave risk to the public? Secondly, the right hon. Gentleman refers to regular quasi-judicial reviews of detention and the person's detention. How frequent will such reviews be? If a system can be devised, which is both fair and protects the public, I, for one, would support that.
Let me put an additional point to the Home Secretary. He has rightly talked about sex offenders, but is there not a bigger problem here? Not just the unconvicted are involved; convicted sex offenders, some of whom have served longish sentences, are released from prison into the community in the near certainty that they will offend again. The result is that persistent sexual abusers—who, during their lifetime, can have dozens of victims—have their career of abuse interrupted by prison, but not halted by it.
Is not one way forward to give the courts more power in sentencing and, in particular, to make possible the wider use of life sentences for sex offenders, in some circumstances? Would that not have the advantage that an offender would not be released until there was some confidence that he would not reoffend? An offender could

be released on licence, and could be recalled. He could be made subject of a positive requirement—for example, that he should continue to have treatment. He would be subject to those conditions for the whole of his lifetime.
Does the Home Secretary agree that, if we are properly to protect the public, there should be extra provisions—for the unconvicted, but also for convicted sex offenders who, all too often, are released into the community and then offend again?

Mr. Straw: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for the support in principle that he has offered to the proposals. I understand that he will want to comment in detail when he sees the consultative document.
The right hon. Gentleman asks about the standard of proof. That will be dealt with in the document, but we are looking for a standard of proof similar to that which applies within the mental health provisions—one that is bespoke for judging those matters and, above all, as he rightly said, for establishing whether a serious personality disorder poses a grave risk to the public. The protection of the public must be the paramount consideration when the courts are judging whether to make an order of this kind. The period, too, will be the subject of consultation. The Butler committee proposed that these reviewable sentences should be subject to review every two years. That will be one of the options raised.
The right hon. Gentleman asks whether I agree that these powers ought to be available to the courts in respect of those who are being convicted of offences as well as those who are not before the courts for any sentence. The answer is yes. As I made clear in my statement, these powers would apply whether someone was before the courts for an offence or not. If someone is before the courts for an offence—no matter what the nature of the offence is and even if it does not normally carry a heavy penalty—it would be open to the courts, subject to the criteria being met, to impose one of these indeterminate, but reviewable, sentences.
Such a sentence would be passed not as punishment in respect of the offence, but properly to protect the public and to deal with a situation that has rightly alarmed hon. Members on both sides of the House. A known sex offender who has been convicted of only a relatively minor offence that by no stretch of the imagination could reasonably carry a life sentence, and who is about to be released, could tell prison staff that he knows that he cannot control himself and will commit further offences. At the moment, however, nothing can be done to prevent the release of such a person, if he were sentenced before 1992.
I believe that the current range of life sentences available to the courts is broadly satisfactory. It is being reviewed in the context of the sex offender review, which the Minister of State, Home Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, South (Mr. Boateng), recently announced. That availability, however, depends on the severity of the crime, whereas I am seeking to ensure that there is no longer a lottery—a matter of chance—in respect of whether someone who plainly poses a grave risk to the public is or is not detained. If such people pose that grave risk, and they suffer from a severe personality disorder, and whether or not they are before the court for an offence, and regardless of what kind of offence it is, they ought to be the subject of this kind of order.

Mr. Chris Mullin: As the Home Secretary acknowledged, this is an extremely grave step,


designed to address an extremely grave problem. I am glad to hear that he will consult widely. May I ask just two questions? First, what estimate does he have of the number of people likely to be affected by the measure? Secondly, can he assure the House that people will not be written off as untreatable simply because facilities for treating them are inadequate or do not exist?

Mr. Straw: The estimates of the total number of people suffering from such severe personality disorders and who are currently at large vary considerably. The best estimates that I have been given are that the number currently at large—not in the hospital or prison system—is between 300 and 600 and that the total number of people who suffer from such disorders, the vast majority of whom are, thankfully, detained under the Mental Health Acts or in prison, is some 2,700. However, those are only estimates.
I accept entirely my hon. Friend's second point—that people should not be written off as untreatable. Somebody may be deemed untreatable by a particular group of psychiatrists, but be susceptible to treatment by clinical psychologists, psychoanalysts or psychotherapists, or just within a therapeutic community. We should not write anybody off. Above all, the root of our concern must be the risk that such people pose to the public.

Mr. Simon Hughes: For this significant but very small group of people, the prospect of having a careful consultation is welcome because it is important to get the balance right. Does the Home Secretary agree that, in protecting an individual's liberty when that individual has not been convicted of an offence, the state has a duty to ensure that the test of what evidence is sufficient is met only if the most widely agreed, sufficiently high and tightly defined definition justifies that loss of liberty when set against personal or public safety? If that view is shared across the Floor of the House, will the Home Secretary assure us that an individual or his advocate will always be able to trigger a review, that reviews will not occur only at the instigation of other authorities, and that that will be reviewable by the courts?
Does the Home Secretary agree that this reform exercise can be done properly only in the context of the Mental Health Acts? We must take the opportunity of breaking down the barrier between the prison medical service and the national health service, so that those with illness or personality disorders, whether offenders or not, are looked after by the same professionals. We shall therefore have a consistent assessment of need and risk.

Mr. Straw: I accept what the hon. Gentleman says—of course, the criteria must be clearly defined. We are talking about taking away the liberty of individuals who have not been convicted of a proportionate criminal offence. It is a very grave step to take. None of us should be under any illusions about that. It would be preposterous if we were to treat such a matter lightly.
By way of reassurance, I should like to tell the hon. Gentleman that the medical profession and mental health tribunals already have substantial experience of depriving people of their liberty where individuals with severe personality disorders are also classified as treatable; thus,

this is not an area where there is no experience, and we shall seek to build on the experience that exists. I agree that an individual must be able to trigger a review—it would be unacceptable if they were not—but on a periodic basis.
I take the hon. Gentleman's point about the prison health service working more closely with the national health service. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and I are working on plans, which we shall announce to the House in due course, to achieve that end.

Mr. Tony Benn: Is my right hon. Friend aware that most of what he has said could have been read in today's newspapers, and it is an insult to the House that we should read in the newspapers a statement to be made by a Minister? Although I recognise that there is a problem here, has my right hon. Friend looked at some of the precedents: internment without trial in Northern Ireland was justified on exactly the same basis—that people who had committed no offence should be kept out of the public domain without a trial? In the Soviet Union, that practice was widely followed because it can be easily abused. Will he take very seriously the arguments that have been made, namely that these matters should be dealt with under the Mental Health Acts and the Government should not take powers that allow them to put away anyone who, in their judgment, could potentially be a danger to the community—although such people no doubt exist?

Mr. Straw: I am sorry to disappoint my right hon. Friend, but I do not accept a sentence of what he has said.
There is no parallel whatever between what I am proposing and internment without trial. For a start, internment without trial was, and always will be, the result of an Executive decision, whereas we propose a very careful, judicially based process whereby people will be detained only by a court, and that will be subject to review. Internment without trial is, moreover, outwith our obligations under the European convention on human rights, whereas we are satisfied, and I am advised, that these proposals are fully within those obligations, and are entirely compatible with article 5.1, which provides for the detention of people of "unsound mind".
It is generally acknowledged that the Mental Health Acts need to be reviewed, but I do not believe that this kind of change can wait until they are reviewed. Let me say to my right hon. Friend that what is exposed by the need for this provision is an intellectual failure within the Mental Health Acts. I suspect that even he subscribes to the view that it is right to detain people who have severe personality disorders, but are treatable. If that is so, why on earth is it wrong to detain people who are regarded as untreatable, but who continue to pose exactly the same or a worse risk to the public?

Sir Brian Mawhinney: Like most hon. Members, I welcome the right hon. Gentleman's proposals in principle. As he has reasonably said, we shall want to look at the details.
The right hon. Gentleman spoke of those who would be detained subject to occasional quasi-judicial review. Will he examine those proposals again before producing a White Paper? Depriving people of their liberty is an important and serious step, and the right hon. Gentleman


might consider that, notwithstanding the Butler report, an annual review would be appropriate. He might also consider that it would help the courts if the review were conducted by an independent, mixed tribunal, consisting of both legal and health experts, which could then report independently to a court looking at an annual reflection.
I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will accept my proposals as constructive suggestions.

Mr. Straw: I accept both proposals in the constructive spirit in which they were offered. The appropriate period for review is a matter for debate, and we will canvass opinion. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will respond to what will be a consultative document—I should make it clear that there will not be a White Paper at this stage. I think his suggestion of a mixed tribunal combining people from different disciplines is very valuable.

Mr. Gerald Bermingham: I hope that my right hon. Friend accepts that the problem is caused, first, by deficiencies in the Mental Health Acts and, secondly, by the fact that care in the community has collapsed. There are people out there who have committed no crime but who are desperately sick, and there are not the facilities or the means to treat them. Under the Mental Health (Patients in the Community) Act 1995, we have had a series of tribunals which have worked extremely well. I hope that my right hon. Friend will bear in mind the expertise that such tribunals contain, and will allow them to continue. Those who are sick should be taken out of the community, often for their own good, and such cases should be dealt with by tribunals consisting of experts in the field.
Finally, will my right hon. Friend bear in mind the fact that, when people are taken out of the community and reviews take place, not only those people but the community as a whole should benefit? If the Mental Health Acts were amended to contain simply the word "treatable" or "containable", that might go a long way towards dealing with the psychopaths who languish in prison, to the danger of other prisoners.

Mr. Straw: My hon. Friend is right to say that part of the problem arises from what we now recognise to be deficiencies in the scheme of the Mental Health Acts, and the way in which it has been implemented in recent years. I am glad that my hon. Friend supports the changes and recognises that some of these people have to be detained.

Mrs. Angela Browning: What consideration has the Home Secretary given to existing mental health services in our prisons? I am not talking about psychiatric secure units, where one would expect to have the right level of staffing. He will know that many people who are detained and then say, as they are about to be released, that they believe that they will be a risk, will be the easiest cases to identify, but, throughout our Prison Service, there is very patchy provision of mental health services for serving prisoners. What will he do to ensure that there is proper diagnosis and intervention by appropriate staff while people who could fall into the category that he outlined are serving sentences in mainstream prisons? I must say also that I welcome his proposals.

Mr. Straw: I am grateful to the hon. Lady for what she says. She is right to say that current mental health

provision is patchy. It improved under the previous Administration. We have tried to do the same. About 750 prisoners have been transferred, following proper diagnosis, from the Prison Service to the national health service while they have been detained. None the less, we accept that the system has to be improved. We have had good advice from Sir David Ramsbotham, chief inspector of prisons for England and Wales. As I said to the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes), that factor is one of the many reasons why we seek to ensure at every level that the prison health service and the national health service work much more closely together.

Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: My right hon. Friend will accept that there are no clear clinical definitions of severe personality disorder and that many of those people will not be treatable in the normal sense. Therefore, will he not only ensure that anyone who is committed under the system undertakes more than the normal medical examination under the Mental Health Acts, but seriously consider where such a person will be confined?
The proposal is an abuse of human rights, but many of us believe that it will be justified because of the danger that those very difficult people pose to the community at large. However, before such a change in the law takes place, we must be clear that there cannot be mistakes, that there must be a ready and rapid way in which to put any problems right and, above all, that what happens to those people occurs in a context that can be easily defended and properly policed.
The categories will include not just people coming out of prison or mental health services. It is not acceptable to put extra pressures on to the medical profession, expecting it to cope with people who are not treatable.

Mr. Straw: It is becoming clear—it was obvious from the Fallon report into Ashworth hospital—that there is a substantial debate among clinicians about the nature of treatability. Some clinicians take a very narrow view of that; the trend has been towards that view. Others take a much wider view. I could quote, for example, Professor Ronald Blackburn, professor of clinical psychology at the university of Liverpool, who has said that there is insufficient evidence to support the opinion of some clinicians that nothing works with this group.
It is as wrong in psychiatric medicine to regard treatability as something that is fixed in time, as it is in any other sort of medicine, whether oncology or another specialty. As the science develops—the science not only of psychiatry, but of clinical psychology and many other disciplines—a condition that we previously regarded as wholly untreatable may become treatable. We always have to bear that in mind.
Above all, the argument for this change is that of the safety of the public. That has to be the paramount consideration.

Mr. Humfrey Malins: May I also offer my support to the Home Secretary for what he has said? This is a difficult area.
Who will originate the proceedings: the police or others? Does the right hon. Gentleman envisage that they will be heard in a magistrates court, Crown court or any


other court? Does the Home Secretary agree that they should be heard in public? Does he also agree—particularly as those who will appear, including those with no previous convictions, may be very poor—that, throughout the matter, any defendant, for want of a better word, should have full rights to legal and other representation and legal aid?

Mr. Straw: Depriving individuals of liberty in such circumstances for an indeterminate period—certainly, in most cases, it would be much more than the 12 months' total maximum that a magistrates court could impose—is a very serious matter and would have to be dealt with by the higher courts. We have to consult on whether the appropriate court is a Crown court, with all its connotations as the court in charge of criminal proceedings, or whether the matter is more appropriately dealt with under the aegis of civil courts. In the consultative document, we shall consider that matter, and the issue of who will originate proceedings; that could vary, as an inmate's propensity to reoffend might come to the attention of the Prison Service, the police, or mental health services, in the case of someone who had not committed any offence known to police but who should still be subject to such an order.

Ann Clwyd: I am glad that my right hon. Friend is consulting widely, and also that he is supporting further research into the subject. May I tell him that I sat for many years as a lay member of a mental health tribunal, and that I found it a most difficult job to decide who was sane, who was not sane, who should be confined in hospital and who should be released? After many years of observation, I found that people who were locked up in hospital were far saner than those on the other side making the decision. It is a matter not only of treatability but of how initially we assess severe personality disorder. Among health professionals, there is an argument about making such assessments. I am concerned also, of course, about putting people in prison—locking them up—on the basis not of what they have done but of what they might do. I am sure that my right hon. Friend will agree that it is very difficult—perhaps it is the most difficult thing of all—to prove that one is not dangerous.

Mr. Straw: I accept the gravamen of what my hon. Friend says from her experience. There is no question but that this is a very difficult matter, and that we have a gap in provision precisely because it is so difficult. However, the result—about which there is no argument—of the gap is that there are very dangerous, personality disordered people about who, if they are not detained, will go out and commit further offences. Some of those people themselves know that they will commit further offences. Hon. Members on both sides of the House have had detailed dealings with some of the offenders and with some of those who have had to advise them. Some of the offenders themselves have begged for the security of detention, because they do not trust themselves not to commit the most serious offences.
Strangely enough, as well as owing it to the public, we owe it to those offenders to provide incarceration. At the margin, there are other offenders about whom there will

be an argument. Diagnosing the condition is very difficult. That task is not made easier by the fact that many of those individuals are masters of deceit, in deceiving not only others but themselves. However, we have to use the best skills available to do the best job we can.

Mr. Robert Key: I thank the Home Secretary for finding what seems to be a sensible way through a tangled web and also his officials, for the way in which they have dealt with individual cases. Certainly in the case in my own constituency and South Swindon, it was of enormous benefit that the Member of Parliament was included in the early-warning system. In the early stages, there was a serious lack of co-ordination, which was much helped by ready access by a Member of Parliament to the Home Secretary and his team.
Will the Home Secretary consider also the matter of funding and of what happens after a decision is taken? If a prisoner nearing release is instead re-detained, is it fair that the cost of keeping him or her inside an institution should be borne by the local health authority rather than by the Home Office? That is a genuine problem.

Mr. Straw: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his remarks, particularly his approbation of the work of my officials, who have worked very hard indeed with local police and local probation services to ensure proper consultation with local Members. I should say that I had him, some other Conservative Members and some Labour Members in mind when I thanked hon. Members for the very responsible approach that has been taken to the matter, despite the huge public pressure in their areas and demands for extreme action, which of course could not be delivered. The hon. Gentleman raises an important point about funding. We must consider that, because I accept that the current arrangements are unsatisfactory.

Mr. Win Griffiths: I welcome what my right hon. Friend has said, and I believe that he has recognised that this is an incredibly difficult area in which to come to the right solution. One issue that worries me—it has been alluded to by others—is the physical resource of the trained and qualified forensic psychiatrists and clinical psychologists in a range of services. We know that hundreds of people languishing in prison should be receiving treatment in medium or highly secure units, but that there are no places for them. What steps will be taken during the consultation to look at the skilled professionals who will be needed for the work? In Wales, what consultation will take place through the Welsh Office and, later, the Welsh Assembly?

Mr. Straw: As my hon. Friend intimates, this discrete issue is only one part of a range of necessary reforms to mental health provision in England and Wales. My hon. Friend may know that my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Health and for Wales have announced expenditure of more than £700 million on improvements to mental health services in England and Wales, which will have some impact on the wider problem that my hon. Friend raises.

Mrs. Virginia Bottomley: With others, I welcome the statement today, but I share the reservations—first, on the difficulties of cost shunting.


One of the problems of severely mentally ill offenders is that they are unloved by the prison or the health authorities, and they are extremely costly to care for. Will the Home Secretary look at that issue during the consultation?
May I associate myself with those who have referred to civil liberties? The Government are known as effective followers of fashion, but this is an issue where the loophole needs to be closed. We could have a situation where an individual's civil rights were overlooked and where people were incarcerated and forgotten in the long term. At a time when legal, prison and health services are creaking under the strain of additional expectations and constrained resources, I hope that the Home Secretary will make sure that this is an area in which we deliver, and that his statement is the beginning, and not the end, of his initiative.

Mr. Straw: We will deal with cost shunting, and we are proposing a range of options in the consultation document on how the new service should operate—including whether it should be a separate service or a combined one under the health and prison services—precisely to cope with that issue. Although I made the statement today, the fact that it is a joint statement by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and me shows our close working relationship with the Department of Health. Whatever other charge is made against me, I cannot be accused lightly of being a follower of fashion.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Paul Boateng): Certainly not.

Mr. Straw: My hon. Friend the Minister, who is a follower of fashion—although he is not wearing his Ozwald Boateng suit today—says, "Hear, hear," to that.
The right hon. Lady is right: we must be conscious of individuals' civil liberties. This is a serious step that should be taken only where the gravest risk to the public is shown to be likely. Under the comprehensive spending review, substantial sums are being invested in the Prison Service to improve regimes and to improve the possibility of treatment for at least some of those people while they are incarcerated.

Mr. Tam Dalyell: May we return to the topic raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) on the pressures on medical staff? In particular, will the Home Secretary clarify what he said in his statement about compulsory post-release supervision? Is it not all too easy to be lulled into complacency? Is not hindsight a very wonderful thing? What will be done to help staff who have made errors of judgment? None of us has perfect foresight, and staff can often get into great difficulty with people who do not understand the problems of such judgments. Will some help be given to medical staff in such circumstances?

Mr. Straw: I hope that such help is given. My hon. Friend is right to raise the issue. We should not condemn medical staff for trying to operate the Mental Health Acts on inadequate and flawed criteria. Having hindsight is easy. Even if the changes that I am proposing are acceptable to this House and the other place, some people will slip through the net. This is not a counsel of perfection; it is an

effort to improve on the current situation. My hon. Friend is also correct to refer to supervision after release. We hope that as many individuals as possible will go back into the community under supervision when it is judged safe for them to do so.

Mr. Crispin Blunt: Given the warning of the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) about the difficulty of diagnosing severe personality disorder and the fact that we have a "something must be done" society, shown by the mentality of the tabloid press, will the Home Secretary bear in mind the enormous pressure that will be put on those who have to assess whom to incarcerate in an attempt to eliminate all risk to society? One of the prices of a free society is the acceptance of risk.

Mr. Straw: That is very important. We cannot eliminate risks; we can only do our best to reduce risk. That is the purpose of the proposals.

Mr. David Winnick: No one is likely to dispute the need to defend the public against those who undoubtedly suffer from the personality disorders that my right hon. Friend has described. However, does he accept that there is bound to be unease—this has already been expressed by hon. Members on both sides of the House—over the possibility of abuses and the nightmare scenario of finding in 25 years' time that someone has been wrongfully detained from the beginning? The House should be concerned with individuals as well as with the general public. If the powers are to be taken, is it not essential that there should be sufficient safeguards to make it difficult for the mistakes that I have mentioned to occur? There must be regular reviews and people who have been detained without committing an offence must be represented. It will be difficult to be fully satisfied, but the review system should be sufficient to make us reasonable satisfied that the rights of individuals will not be abused.

Mr. Straw: My hon. Friend raises an important point. As I have said, we have to ensure that there are safeguards. The regular reviews—I have talked about them occurring every year or two—should make it impossible for someone to be wrongly detained for 25 years. An individual may protest for 25 years that he has been wrongly detained, but the decision will be for the court or tribunal, which will regularly review the situation.

Mrs. Jacqui Lait: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that a blanket condemnation of care in the community as a failure saddens and angers the many thousands in the community for whom it has been a success and the volunteers and professionals who look after them? Does he anticipate a change in the balance of care for those with severe personality disorders away from incarceration—which his statement reeked of—towards a more therapeutic community and a greater provision of secure accommodation in the health service?

Mr. Straw: I do not for a second condemn or criticise those who have the care of the mentally ill in the community, but my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health has said that, in his judgment, care in the community has failed vulnerable people. I, too, have long


held that view, not least from my constituency experience. The hon. Lady and I may disagree on the matter, but I do not regard current provisions as satisfactory.
On the provision of therapeutic environments, I made it clear that, although the individuals concerned are, by definition, all currently classified as "untreatable" under the Mental Health Acts, we should not write them off and every effort should be made to treat them in the best possible way and to involve not only those from the psychiatric profession but clinical psychologists and many others.

Points of Order

Mr. Tam Dalyell: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. Since your 12 o'clock meeting, there have been reports of civilian casualties and of further military action over Iraq. Ought it not to be made clear to the House whether we are in a state of war? If we are not, and there is a direct hit or a malfunction by a Tornado, the pilots, British or American, will be in a simply parlous position. Have you had any request from the Foreign Office to make a statement either about the military situation in Iraq or about the reports of Iraqi threats against Saudi Arabia and Kuwait? Perhaps this is a matter of paramount importance.

Madam Speaker: I have not had any request from the Foreign Office to make a statement today on that issue. We have tomorrow to look to, but, as far as I know, there is no statement forthcoming.

Mr. Michael Fabricant: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. Have you read the report by Oxford Economic Forecasting and the London business school, stating that we are already technically in a recession? Have you received any request from the Chancellor of the Exchequer to come to the House and explain how a golden economic legacy could have been so quickly transformed?

Madam Speaker: I fear that the hon. Gentleman is seeking to prolong debate rather than to raise a point of order. Let us move on.

Orders of the Day — House of Lords Bill

Considered in Committee.

[SIR ALAN HASELHURST in the Chair]

Clause 1

EXCLUSION OF HEREDITARY PEERS

Sir Patrick Cormack: I beg to move amendment No. 1, in page 1, line 5, leave out 'a member' and insert
'entitled to vote in a division'.

The Chairman of Ways and Means (Sir Alan Haselhurst): With this, it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 23, in page 1, line 6, at end add
', except that holders of an hereditary peerage shall enjoy the same rights as any other member of the House of Lords (including the right to speak and vote) during any debate on a Bill containing any provision to extend the maximum duration of a Parliament beyond five years.'.

No. 10, in title, line 1, leave out 'End' and insert `Restrict'.

Sir Patrick Cormack: I thank the President of the Council for so readily accepting that this Bill, perhaps above all others, is one that should be taken in all its stages on the Floor of the House. I am delighted to see her here. Having said that, there is little else on which I can congratulate her. The amendments have one aim in view: to make a bad Bill better.
Now is not the time to repeat all the arguments that were advanced on Second Reading a fortnight ago, but it was clear from that debate that the Government had moved far too hastily and introduced a Bill without giving proper thought to its consequences or any thought whatever to the consequences of stage 2. I recognise that it is not appropriate for us to debate stage 2 in detail, or even at all. I shall, therefore, concentrate my remarks entirely on stage 1. Amendment No. 1 is designed to try to ensure that the interim House of Lords has quality and can still perform as effectively as the present House, and that there is some continuity.
The amendment's aim is not to challenge the Government on the hereditary peers' right to vote, but there is a great deal to be said for allowing hereditary peers to sit in the interim House of Lords and to perform the duties in which many of them have been conspicuously successful over the years. On Second Reading, I pointed out that 40 per cent. of the regular attenders in the House of Lords are hereditary peers. We owe them a debt of gratitude for their hard work, and I was glad that the Parliamentary Secretary, Privy Council Office, who wound up the debate on Second Reading, accepted that without equivocation. If that 40 per cent. are not allowed to attend the House after the Bill's passage, there will be a large, consequential burden on life peers.
We have to remember that we are discussing not paid legislators, but those who have a high ideal of public service. The average peer costs the taxpayer some £6,400

a year in allowances. Although we in this place are not paid a king's ransom, we are paid significantly more than that. There is hardly a peer in the other place who draws more than £10,000 in allowances. We are dealing not with full-time legislators, but with people who give their time, talents and expertise, often in specific areas where they have particular knowledge, and do so entirely selflessly.
In recognising that fact, we must recognise the type of Chamber that the other place is. Parliament has two main functions. One is to hold the Executive to account and the other is to scrutinise legislation. Nobody could argue that it is not appropriate that the holding to account should be done particularly in this Chamber, where the elected representatives of the people, day after day in Question Time and other forums, have the opportunity to call Ministers to account.
Equally, one could not argue with any great conviction that our powers of scrutiny are exercised as effectively as they should be. Whole swathes of legislation, particularly secondary legislation, are never adequately debated in this Chamber, but much of that legislation is effectively scrutinised in the other place. In the previous Session, for example, 3,963 amendments were passed in the House of Lords. There were only 179 Divisions in the Lords during the whole Session, of which the Government won 134—about 75 per cent. Those Bills were subjected to a degree of scrutiny and attention that they did not receive here. That scrutiny came not only from life peers, but from hereditary peers, who play a substantial part in the positive work of improving legislation.
It is easy to single out certain hereditary peers as being exemplary, both in their attendance and their achievement. I have no desire to delay the Committee inordinately by going through a catalogue of such peers, because we desire not to hold up the Bill's passage, but to subject it to proper scrutiny.

Mr. John Bercow: Did my hon. Friend notice that, when he was paying justified tribute to the selfless public service and excellent scrutiny provided by hereditary peers, the hon. Member for Harlow (Mr. Rammell) was snorting in disapproval? Does my hon. Friend think that, if Government Back Benchers do not want similarly to pay tribute, they ought to explain by what, if not public service, hereditary peers are motivated and whether Labour's game plan is to reduce legitimate scrutiny in future?

Sir Patrick Cormack: I thought that the hon. Member for Harlow (Mr. Rammell) had a rather bad cold, but of course everyone should pay proper tribute to selfless public work—and those who selflessly do it.

Mr. Bill Rammell: I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way and allowing me to clarify my snorting. It was in response to the disingenuousness of Conservative Members, who defend the hereditary principle on the ground of public service, when in fact they are defending their vested party political interests.

Sir Patrick Cormack: The hon. Gentleman could not get it more wrong. I have never defended the automatic right of every hereditary peer to sit in the House of Lords or the built-in majority. In 1984, long before the hon. Gentleman came to this place, I sought leave to introduce


a private Member's Bill to that effect, under the ten-minute rule. It was opposed by the Leader of the House, among others, and was not allowed to go further. Many Conservative Members have felt for a long time that there is nothing incompatible in saying that we do not defend the automatic right of hereditary peers to sit in the House of Lords or an in-built majority for any party, while recognising the very real work that many hereditary peers do. They are not in the House of Lords through their own fault, but they are there: many accept the challenge and opportunity for public service that the House of Lords provides and respond in a truly public-spirited manner.
I was about to offer two examples, and now I shall do so; both involve Cross-Bench peers. Last week, some parliamentary awards were given out: at least one distinguished winner is in the Chamber this afternoon, and I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn). Although the Peer of the Year award went to Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish, who is a life peer, the short list included the Countess of Mar. She is a Cross-Bench hereditary peer and has done as much as anyone in either House to draw attention to certain dangers, including the sheep dip problem, which she has made very much her own. People all over the country have great cause to be thankful to her.
My second example is very different, although it involves another hereditary peer. Lord Freyburg is, at 28, still a very young man, and he was 22 when he took his seat. When he entered the House of Lords, he made it his mission to do something about pensions for war widows. He succeeded in persuading my right hon. and hon. Friends in the then Conservative Government to go along with him—a very notable achievement for a young man.
I could cite many other hereditary peers whose service has been, and is, exemplary.

Angela Smith: I think that the hon. Gentleman is missing the point of the debate. No Labour Member would criticise the contribution of any individual hereditary peer: we are critical of the fact that hereditary peers make that contribution with no legitimacy.

Sir Patrick Cormack: I could ask the hon. Lady to define legitimacy, and whether it exists only in this Chamber. However, I shall not be led astray as you would probably rule me out of order Sir Alan. I want merely to develop an argument and to explain why we have tabled the amendment.
An extremely important aspect of the work of the House of Lords is the work done in Select Committees. There are some extremely important Committees in the House of Lords, and perhaps pre-eminent among them are the Select Committee on Science and Technology and the Select Committee on European Communities. Both Committees have done work of incalculable value. On the Science and Technology Committee, there are currently five hereditary peers, and on the European Communities Committee, there are 10, out of 20 members. There are, incidentally, only five Tories between the two Committees.
4.30 pm
During the past Session, the European Communities Committee produced 50 reports, and the Science and Technology Committee produced 16. Those reports ranged over a variety of subjects of real importance. If hon. Members are not familiar with the range of reports, they should try to make themselves so. In a single Session, there were reports of seminal significance on the European ombudsman, the European Union gas directive, EU water policy, Europol, sustainable landfill, aid to shipbuilding, student mobility and airline competition. I could go on and on.
The Science and Technology Committee produced reports that attracted worldwide attention in some cases, including reports on the management of nuclear waste, the scientific and medical evidence on cannabis, digital images as evidence and clinical academic careers.

Dr. Phyllis Starkey: Is it the point of the hon. Gentleman's argument that those Committees would be unable to do that work if their members were life peers only? In particular, is he suggesting that of the Science and Technology Committee, which relies largely on those of its members who have direct scientific experience?

Sir Patrick Cormack: Some of them, including the chairman, are, of course, hereditary peers. The point is very simple, and I hope that the hon. Lady can grasp it. If we withdraw hereditary peers quickly from those Committees, the Committees will suffer. The burden of work is considerable: the European Communities Committee will meet seven times in 17 days during February. The Committee is carrying a heavy burden, and it would be extremely difficult for the life peers alone to sustain the whole extra burden.
In the amendments, we merely suggest that those who have given distinguished service should be allowed to continue to do so.

Mr. Stephen Twigg: Is the hon. Gentleman arguing that, after a general election in which someone with expertise has lost his or her seat, he or she should be entitled to retain a seat in the House of Commons, without voting rights, on the basis that we should not want to suffer the loss of expertise?

Mr. Tony Benn: An excellent point!

Sir Patrick Cormack: It is a superficially attractive point, but, when my former colleague, Michael Portillo, lost his seat, he was replaced by the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Twigg). We are talking about an interim House in which those who will be obliged to leave the House of Lords will not be replaced. There is no suggestion that there should be an immediate and massive creation of life peers. The Government have not thought through the consequences of their actions.
The amendment relates only to the interim House. We want stage 2 to follow the interim House, and we want that stage to be arrived at by consensus if possible. Until stage 2 occurs, however, there is work to be done and a great burden to be sustained. Those who will be left to sustain that burden will find it extremely difficult to do so.

Mr. Mike Hancock: If, heaven forbid, the hon. Gentleman's amendment were carried,


how would the new Chamber operate for those non-voting hereditary peers? Who would be called to speak? Would those who have a vote be given priority in speaking in debates, or would speeches be made by all corners under the system that operates in the House of Lords at present? There could be an imbalance between those who participated in debates and those who voted.

Sir Patrick Cormack: The House of Lords regulates its own business in, some people would say, a rather more satisfactory way than we do, in that those who wish to speak in a debate put down their names and know that they will be called. Those with a particular knowledge, specialty or expertise put down their names, and the quality of debates in the other place is thus extremely high. Looking through Lords Hansard, I found a particularly good example of that last week in a debate on the arts. Whether the debates are on the armed forces, in which former field marshals can take part; on the arts, in which former performers, great musicians, artists and others can take part; or on commerce, in which many captains of industry can take part, the quality tends to be extremely high. What I am saying to the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Hancock) is that we are concerned to maintain that quality.
As I said a moment ago, we are talking not about stage 2, but stage 1, or the interim stage. We are fearful that, if many people who have much to contribute, and who have contributed much over the years, are suddenly obliged to withdraw, the quality of work at the other end of the Corridor will not be what it has been hitherto. I cannot emphasise too often or too strongly that we are concerned with phase 1. We are not seeking to anticipate the debates that this Chamber and the other place will rightly have about stage 2.
We have to await the report of the royal commission. Conservative Members are also waiting for the Mackay commission. Lord Hurd is a member of the Mackay commission and is now a member of the royal commission, and will be a useful link between the two. However, we do not know what either body will say.
In the debate a fortnight ago, we heard 37 or 38 Back-Bench speeches, and it was clear that there were 37 or 38—probably 47 or 48—different views about what should emerge in phase 2. That applies equally to both sides of the Chamber. There was not a common thread. There were unicameralists, those who favoured a direct or indirect election, those who favoured a mixture, and those who favoured a nomination system. We shall have the opportunity to debate those alternatives, but we are currently debating what I hope is going to be an orderly transition, and the aim of the amendment is to make it more orderly than it would otherwise be.
We have to have regard to the quality of work done by the other place. Let me turn again to its European Communities Committee. This Chamber does not scrutinise European legislation as effectively as it might. That is no criticism of the hon. Member for Clydesdale (Mr. Hood), who puts in a tremendous amount of time and effort to chair our European Scrutiny Committee. He and I have had discussions about it on the Floor of the House and privately, and there is not much difference between us. The massive amount of legislation coming from Europe means that it is difficult for hon. Members adequately to scrutinise it because of the many other pressures on them.
The Committee in the other place, which has various Sub-Committees, produces reports which are reckoned throughout Europe to be exemplary. Indeed, they are frequently held up as the best example of scrutiny of European legislation—better than that provided by the European Parliament itself, although that may not be difficult. Half the members of that Committee are hereditary peers, and all we are saying is that, for the transitional period, they should be able to continue to give of their time, talent and expertise.
In addition, the Committees in another place tend to have a more constant membership than Committees of this place. Hardly a week goes by without one noticing on the Order Paper motions to remove one hon. Member from a Committee and to replace him or her with another. That is fine—we understand why it happens—but the House of Lords tends to appoint its Committees for a whole Parliament, and members who are not experts therefore tend to become specialists.

Mr. Tam Dalyell: The hon. Gentleman referred to the Mackay commission. When Lord Mackay was at the Scottish Bar, he had a reputation for being a phenomenally fast worker. Out of curiosity, when are his pearls of wisdom expected?

Sir Patrick Cormack: Soon, and I think that that will prove a more accurate "soon" than those that we often get in answers from the Government. I think that the hon. Gentleman will not have to contain his impatience beyond Easter, and that Lord Mackay's report will demand the most careful consideration. I do not know what his commission will recommend. I have no idea whether it will recommend one solution, or give us two or three alternatives to discuss. It would be discourteous, to put it no higher, to come to a definitive conclusion about the shape of the other place in phase 2 until we have seen what that hard-working commission will recommend.

Mr. David Winnick: If an amendment along the same lines as that for which Lord Cranborne got the sack from the Leader of the Opposition is carried in another place, and duly supported by the Government, in allowing 91 hereditary peers to remain, it would surely meet all the hon. Gentleman's arguments. I suspect that he is really saying that he does not want any change.

Sir Patrick Cormack: No. It is unfair of the hon. Gentleman to say that, given my track record on such matters. An amendment similar to that to which he referred is on the amendment paper, has been selected and will be debated later. I must not anticipate that debate. My proposal is in many ways a better alternative. The so-called Cranborne amendment—the Weatherill amendment as we call it—was the product of no deal to which we were party. It was a suggestion that would make a bad Bill better. We will deploy those arguments tomorrow.
I am discussing something that would at a stroke make the Bill very much better and enable us to proceed very speedily if the Government were minded to accept it. If they are not minded to accept it, they stand convincingly charged with constitutional vandalism of a high order. The Leader of the House can smile and scoff, but to destroy something of proven worth without saying what will be put in its place is indeed constitutional vandalism.


Our constitution is a finely balanced mechanism like a wonderful clock. If one part of the mechanism is removed, the whole thing stops and is thrown into disarray. We are playing dangerously with a constitution that has evolved over many centuries. It is permissible for Labour Members to say that they wish to get rid of the hereditary peers' voting rights. This amendment does not challenge that; we are saying that there must be an orderly period of transition which recognises what has gone before and the public service, in the best sense of that term.

Dr. Tony Wright: I do not normally associate the hon. Gentleman with exaggerated rhetoric, but I am at a loss to understand him. The Government say that they are minded to accept an amendment from another place allowing the continuation of a number of hereditary peers during an interim period, and they have set up a royal commission chaired by a Conservative peer. That may be described as constitutional generosity of a high order, but certainly not as constitutional vandalism.

Sir Patrick Cormack: The whole approach of the Government is constitutional vandalism. The Leader of the House made an extraordinary statement on Second Reading. She said that if the so-called Weatherill amendment came before this Chamber, as it will more or less, she would be minded to ask her right hon. and hon Friends to vote against it. If it were tabled in the other place, it would possibly be voted for. When it returned to this place, the right hon. Lady's right hon. and hon. Friends would, presumably, be asked to stand on their heads. That would be an interesting constitutional spectacle. She is using this proposal, which is being held out as a sort of prize, to try to—I choose my words with extreme care—bamboozle, if not blackmail, people into accepting the Bill without adequate and proper scrutiny.

The Chairman: Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Member but, against his better judgment, he has been led into territory covered by a later amendment that I have selected. I suggest respectfully that he returns to the main core of his argument on this group of amendments.

Sir Patrick Cormack: I stand well rebuked, Sir Alan. I was being led astray, and we shall deal with the amendment to which you referred later.
In the other place, we have a group of men and women who represent 40 per cent. of those who regularly attend on House of Lords affairs, and who make a significant contribution to the legislative process by their attendance. During the transitional period, they should be allowed to continue to attend and to give of their expertise, time and talents, but not to vote. The proposal is very modest.

Mr. Bowen Wells: Is not another feature of hereditary peers that they have not been selected by the political party to which they belong? Indeed, they may not belong to any political party. Therefore, they give a view that is not whipped, corralled or bullied, and what they say in Committees, such as the

European Communities Committee, has greater credibility and acceptability to many of the readers of the reports. It would be a very good idea to retain such peers for that reason alone.

Sir Patrick Cormack: My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. One of the reasons why I find the elected solution less than entirely persuasive is that it is difficult to envisage the election of Cross Benchers. My fear is that party considerations would become much more dominant in an elected upper Chamber. I must not be led astray, although my hon. Friend's point is good, and certainly supports my arguments.
Amendment No. 23 would allow hereditary peers to speak and vote in the House of Lords whenever it debated a Bill to extend the maximum life of a Parliament beyond five years. That is very important constitutionally. Both the Parliament Act 1911 and the successor Parliament Act 1949 contain a provision which expressly reserves total powers for the House of Lords when dealing with such a Bill. There is no time limit or veto to make such a power temporary. We think that it is entirely proper and expedient that there should be such a provision in this Bill, given the Government's huge majority. If amendment No. 23 is drafted defectively, it is for the President of the Council and her colleagues to point that out. We hope that there can be no serious disagreement on the need for such a safeguard.
I commend both amendments to the Committee and I hope that the Committee will be minded to accept them. I am inclined to divide the Committee on both amendments if the Government are minded not to accept them.

Mr. Hancock: We have heard an interesting attempt to defend the indefensible, or to pull something out of the can at the eleventh hour to save a few friends in another place. I share the view of the hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack) that some Members of the House of Lords do first-class work. As a Member of this House representing this Parliament in the Council of Europe, I work regularly with Members of the House of Lords who work long and hard in the service of that organisation. The likes of Lord Judd, Lord Ponsonby, Lord Grenfell, the Earl of Dundee and Lord Russell-Johnston have all done excellent service, and some of them continue to do so.
The hon. Member for South Staffordshire spoke of service, credibility, loyalty and knowledge of the task. The Earl of Dundee is a classic case of the Tories preaching one thing and delivering another. Members of the Council of Europe from the 40-odd nations represented there get to know one other, and few of them would deny that the Earl of Dundee was an active member who was well informed, widely respected and did a great deal of work. One can imagine the surprise of colleagues not only in this House but elsewhere when the Conservative party removed him from the Council of Europe, with no explanation to his colleagues and very little to him.
That was a classic example of a Tory peer who was totally committed to a cause, with a great deal of working knowledge—the very expertise that we are told is invaluable and that we would be foolish to lose—whom


his own party was prepared to crucify, probably on the pretext of giving someone a little European experience before that person was proposed as a Commissioner. That is what I would say if I were cynical, because it was rather strange to see the person who succeeded him.
The hon. Member for South Staffordshire argued the need for such peers to be in the House of Lords, but he gives no credit to the people who will in fact be there—life peers and those hereditary peers who will gain access to that House again by being created life peers for the duration of the first stage of the reform. The hon. Gentleman underplayed their role in the future governance of this country and in the reform process.
It will be up to the hon. Gentleman's party to select such people to go forward, and it would be a foolish party if it were not careful in that selection. The party should encourage those who will make the selection to select the very people about whom the hon. Gentleman was speaking. I imagine that few of them will not be included among those who are to remain, so that expertise will not be lost.

Sir Nicholas Lyell: The hon. Gentleman is focusing on an important point. He suggests that few Members of the other place would not be among those to be made life peers after the change proposed by the Bill. However, if he considers the list of Members of the House of Lords—Conservative, Labour and Cross—Bencher-who play a role in Committee or in debate that is significant because it relates to their own area of expertise, he will find that that amounts to about 200 hereditary Members of the upper House. Does the hon. Gentleman suggest that that many are likely to be created life peers? Does he not recognise that the contribution of all those who are not created life peers will be lost?

Mr. Hancock: The right hon. and learned Gentleman defends the indefensible, as did the hon. Member for South Staffordshire, who failed miserably to convince the Committee. There is no credibility in that argument. If the political system in this place and the other place cannot come up with the right calibre of person who has the relevant expertise and commitment to the job in the period between the first stage being agreed and implemented and the second stage being seen through, that does no credit to the colleagues of the right hon. and learned Gentleman or to any of the other parties.
I am sure that those Members who are selected to continue to serve will be selected from those who have the relevant expertise. However, we cannot always have everyone whom we want, and my mind goes back to the point made by the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Twigg). Like him, I was somewhat bewildered. I sensed that the hon. Member for South Staffordshire would move on to what happens in this place. I was a Member in the 1980s when I lost my seat by a couple of hundred votes. I was very disappointed. I believed that, during my three years here, I had put together a certain amount of expertise. I would have welcomed the opportunity to be allowed back to say so. However, I rightly accepted that I had to go on to do other things. The expertise that I put together was as much a loss to

the House as it was to the constituents who ceased to have me as their Member of Parliament. Nevertheless, we must live with that. That is the harsh reality of political life.

Mr. Wells: The hon. Gentleman's constituents decided that.

Mr. Hancock: The hon. Gentleman says that from a sedentary position but the fact is that the electorate has put me back. The same constituents have re-elected me. The fact that they gave me a 10-year sabbatical might have been for my benefit, to enable me to gain even more expertise to do a better job in the House of Commons. The process certainly led me to believe that the system works. It is a deliverable system. However, I did not like being denied the opportunity to come to this place.

Mr. Dominic Grieve: Is it not the position that the hon. Gentleman was sent to the House originally to represent a constituency? He lost the power to represent that constituency by the will of the electors and was removed. However, that is not the situation that pertains in the other place. All those who are there are asked to attend to represent themselves because of a purported status, whether it be hereditary or because of a particular expertise. Therefore, the hon. Gentleman's arguments do not work.

Mr. Hancock: That is a very good point. There is this thing about representation. I was convinced that the hon. Member for South Staffordshire, who is very good with words, had used the wrong word when he talked about hereditary peers representing people. They have not been representing anyone. It appears that they were not representing a party on most occasions. They were simply representing themselves.
We surely do not believe that there are experts outside this place and the House of Lords who could not help us in some way. Time and again, we find a way to enable that expertise to be used in Select Committees. They happens whenever they meet. They bring outside expertise into the House. They offer experts outside the opportunity to share their expertise with Members of this place and the House of Lords. Having done so, they move on, or return to their role in life outside Parliament.
If we are talking about representation, let us soon have a place that is wholly representative so that the people can feel that they elect Members of this place and of the second Chamber. I am bitterly disappointed that we are going through a staging process, and that is why I hope that the Committee will defeat the amendment.
My mind returns to when the hon. Member for South Staffordshire talked about—

Sir Patrick Cormack: We shall go through the staging process, as the hon. Gentleman calls it, with or without the amendment. We shall not go straight to stage 2. It was always the Conservative party's argument that the Government should decide what it wanted to replace the House of Lords with, should tell the House of Commons and should then get on with it. They have not done that and so we must go through the interim stage. There is no alternative.

Mr. Hancock: I accept that entirely. However, I am disappointed that we must go through a staging process.
I would have much preferred the big bang. I supported the view that was expressed by many hon. Members on Second Reading, and I certainly shared their disappointment. It was not beyond the wit of the House or that of the Government to produce proposals to achieve what we had in mind. I am sure that the overwhelming majority of the British people would have supported that move. However, according to some hon. Members, having to have a staged process is not a reason to deprive Members of the House of Lords, who will not be able to vote, of the opportunity to participate in debates.

Mr. Wells: Is not the hon. Gentleman overlooking a very important point? The amendment is an attempt to improve the interim House which may, like many things in British life, be far from temporary or interim. It may be almost permanent and last 50, 60 or 70 years. Therefore, it is important to have the quality in the interim House to carry us through, if needs be.

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Mr. Hancock: I hope that the hon. Gentleman's suggestion does not come to fruition. I rather like the glint in the eye of the Leader of the House, which suggests that 50 years might be a tad of an exaggeration for the staging process. Most of us hope that we will resolve those issues in the lifetime of this Parliament and that, certainly by the start of the next Parliament, we will be well on our way to having two democratic, truly representative Houses representing the people of this country. Anything short of that will, in my opinion, be seen as failure. If we are to have a staging process, we have to make the best of what we have.

Mr. David Heath: Does my hon. Friend find slightly offensive, as I do, the imputation from certain Conservative Members that quality is a synonym for hereditary peers and that quality can be achieved only by accident of birth? I reject that notion entirely—it is quite unfounded. I suspect that the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells) would not welcome any person off the street on to his Select Committee, to leaven the discussion and to provide that independence. Why does he apply that principle to hereditary Members of the House of Lords?

Mr. Hancock: I could not agree more with my hon. Friend's intervention; it says a lot in respect of the presentation that we have heard on Second Reading and in Committee. Anyone outside the House who read the amendments would think that some sort of surreal pantomime was taking place here—

The Parliamentary Secretary, Privy Council Office (Mr. Paddy Tipping): One is taking place.

Mr. Hancock: Yes, and others might argue that we are beyond satire today. What some hon. Members are trying to perpetuate is unbelievable and script writers outside the House would have been hard pushed to come up with the sort of amendment that we are considering. It represents mind-bogglingly cynical contempt for what the overwhelming majority of the British people want. They want change.
I want to deal with the second amendment and the suggestion that some demon lurking behind a large Government majority would try to prolong—

Mr. Eric Forth: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, because I want him to elaborate a little on the point that he made a moment ago as if it were uncontentious. He said that the overwhelming majority of the British people want change in this area. What is the basis for that assertion and what evidence does he have? As far as I am aware, the latest opinion poll evidence shows that reform of the House of Lords hardly appears at all on people's list of priorities.

Mr. Hancock: I agree entirely that reform of the House of Lords does not feature high on people's agenda, but when they are asked specifically whether they want change, the overwhelming majority say yes. I am elected to this place to represent people's views. I look at my mailbag, and people are not reluctant to tell me what to vote for and what to vote against. I have not received a single letter suggesting that I should vote against the changes that we are considering, but I have received letters from people who welcome them.

Mr. Forth: How many?

Mr. Hancock: Half a dozen, which, strangely, was the number of Conservative Members who were in the Chamber last week when we were discussing trade union reform. The Conservatives deemed that major Bill, which will give opportunities for representation to millions of people, to be important enough to require only six Conservative Members to attend the debate. Indeed, the Conservatives ran out of participants well before 8 o'clock that night.

The Chairman: Order. I should be grateful if the hon. Gentleman would confine his remarks to the amendment before the Committee.

Mr. Hancock: Of course I will, but that is difficult when I am being given easy leads by Conservative Members.
I return to the amendment and the protection of the nation from a large majority. That is an extremely good point for a Tory party to make nearly two years into a large Labour majority. The Tory party uses the fear factor by saying that these constitutional changes will allow the Government of the day to lengthen a Parliament. I was here in 1984 when Margaret Thatcher had a huge Tory majority. The then Prime Minister made things happen and stopped Conservative Members doing what they knew was right—an example was given earlier of when she prevented the hon. Member for South Staffordshire from moving a private Member's Bill. However, in those three years, I never heard a single Opposition Member suggest that she might embark on a course of action that would prolong the life of a Parliament.

Sir Patrick Cormack: Had Lady Thatcher done so, the Parliament Acts would have allowed the House of Lords to stop it happening. All that we are saying is that that constitutional safeguard should remain on the statute book.

Mr. Hancock: My understanding is that it will not be changed. The group of people representing this nation in the


other place will still have the opportunity to exercise that safeguard if anybody here seems to wander in that direction, although I doubt very much whether anybody will, so the Conservative party's argument does not hold water.
I am disappointed that we cannot move swiftly through the Bill. We need to get it on the statute book: get those hereditary peers who will continue in place and make use of their expertise, say goodbye and thank you to those who will go, but for goodness sake get on with it. I shall be bitterly disappointed if we drag out that process by accepting a measure as cynical as the amendment before us.

Mr. Martin Linton: The hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack) said that his aim was not to challenge the Bill by preserving the right of hereditary peers to speak, on the ground that they do a good job. I join him in paying tribute to the selfless work that many hereditary peers do. However, the amendment would create an entirely anomalous situation. He conceded that hereditary peers should not have the vote, yet argued that they should retain a seat and the right to speak in House of Lords debates—rather like honorary membership of a gentlemen's club. Apart from anything else, that would send confused signals about the Opposition's attitude to the hereditary principle in Parliament. We have already had confused signals about that.

Mr. Desmond Swayne: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Linton: I must finish making the argument first.
The hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) said that he did not oppose the hereditary principle, the hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) said that he did not oppose clause 1, and the hon. Member for South Staffordshire said that he was against the hereditary principle. We are entitled to clarification. Precisely what do Conservative Members mean? They propose an apparently small change by suggesting that hereditary peers should be allowed to continue in the interim, but miss the crux of the Bill, which is to change the basis of membership of the House of Lords.
It is essential that the Bill ends the hereditary principle in Parliament as soon as possible, not just because it is absurd that people should sit in Parliament on account of what their grandfathers or great-grandfathers may have done, but because many of their great-grandfathers should never have been there in the first place. The blunt truth is that, over the centuries, many hereditary peerages were sold by Conservative or Liberal Prime Ministers—indeed, by monarchs—for cash.
During the last Parliament, the right hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major) said that this country had an international reputation for the integrity and honour of its public institutions. It must be the only democracy in the world to have sold places in its own legislature.

Mr. Forth: Will the hon. Gentleman tell us his views on the role of the hereditary principle in Parliament—to which he has just referred—with specific regard to the monarchy? He must clarify his position. He is attacking

the hereditary principle in relation to the upper House; given the monarch's role in the parliamentary process, perhaps he will elaborate on that.

Mr. Linton: rose—

The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr. Michael Lord): Order. I should be grateful if the hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Linton) did not elaborate. Moreover, his own speech is in danger of becoming a Second Reading speech. Will he please confine his remarks to the amendment?

Mr. Linton: I will gladly take your advice, Mr. Lord. I shall not stray, but will stick to the point of the amendment. The amendment, however, raises the issue of whether its aim is to undermine the principle of the Bill, which is that membership of Parliament should be legitimate, accountable and democratic.

Sir Patrick Cormack: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Linton: Yes, as long as the hon. Gentleman does not tempt me away from the point at issue.

Sir Patrick Cormack: I shall not do so. I merely ask the hon. Gentleman to tell me why Lady Jay's position in the House of Lords is more legitimate than that of, say, Lord Cranborne. Lady Jay owes her place to appointment, and, some would say, to the hereditary principle. I should also emphasise to the hon. Gentleman that what we are discussing is an effective transition period.

Mr. Linton: I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman should make such a slight point. The difference between Baroness Jay and Viscount Cranborne is clear. Baroness Jay is in the House of Lords not on account of her father's achievements, but on account of her own: she is there in her own right. I am sorry to hear the hon. Gentleman make such an imputation.
Viscount Cranborne may have achieved things of which he should be proud, and it is possible that, were he not an hereditary peer, he would have been made a life peer. It could be said that his writ of acceleration was, in a sense, a recognition of that. But, to the extent that he owes his position in the House of Lords to the hereditary principle—which is the essence of the hon. Gentleman's question—he is there because his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was Robert Cecil, who was an adviser not to Elizabeth II, but to Elizabeth I. To my mind, such a distant connection with Parliament is no claim that we can accept in this day and age.
There may have been a time when the House of Lords had some legitimacy, but to find it we should have to go back to the 14th century, when it consisted of the country's chief landowners, who had to raise armies for the King and therefore had some right to be in Parliament. For at least the past 200 years the House of Lords has been an anachronism, and, indeed, a source of corruption, poisoning our whole constitution.

Mr. Andrew Tyrie: The hon. Gentleman speaks of the poisoning of the constitution by peers purchasing their peerages for cash. He cited the Liberal


and Conservative parties, but exempted his own party. Is he aware that a significant number of large donors to the Labour party have been appointed to life peerages since May 1997?

Mr. Linton: I will not be tempted to stray from the issue, which is hereditary peerages. To my knowledge, Labour Governments have awarded four or five hereditary peerages in the entire history of the country, most of which were awarded to law officers by the 1930 and 1945 Governments. None of them was in any sense sold. However, the same cannot be said of many current hereditary peerages in the House of Lords.
The point that is fundamental to the debate, and that arises from the amendment, as from the others, is that every other aristocracy in Europe was thrown out of political power centuries ago. By the same token, we should throw ours out of political power by the end of the century—not only the powers of peers in the Lords, but all their other titles and rights. However, I shall not go into that.

Mr. Gerald Howarth: The hon. Gentleman obviously detests the hereditary principle. If Ministers decide to do a deal in another place whereby 91 hereditary peers are allowed to remain, and that proposal returns to this House, what will he do? Given his declaration of profound principle to the Committee, presumably, he will vote against the amendment proposed by Ministers.

Mr. Linton: rose—

The Second Deputy Chairman: Order. Before the hon. Gentleman responds to that intervention, may I remind him and other Members that that is the subject of the next group of amendments? We should not deal with it at the moment.

Mr. Linton: I am more than happy not to take up that point, but I am sure that many of my hon. Friends will take it up during the debate on the next group of amendments. I seek simply to establish the point that is crucial to our understanding of this amendment, as of the others: the present composition of the House of Lords stems, not overwhelmingly but significantly, from the accumulation of corrupt sales of peerages over the centuries. Such a Parliament is no basis on which to go into the next century and, indeed, next millennium.
Just in case the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Ruffley), who is just leaving, thinks that I am making wild accusations, let me say that I am more than happy to spell out the sales of peerages that have led to the current membership of the House of Lords. Indeed, the ancestors of a raft of them bought their peerages from Liberal Prime Ministers.

Mr. David Heath: One.

Mr. Linton: I quote as an example Viscount Devonport. He was a retailer by the name of Hudson Kearton who promised the Liberals £25,000 if he became

a peer. I say that, but what he said was not that he was going to buy a peerage, but that, if he became a peer, he would voluntarily give £25,000 to Liberal party funds. Surprise, surprise, a couple of years later, a viscountcy was awarded to him. His descendant—his grandson—is still in the House of Lords and, as a Cross Bencher, exercises his right over our legislation. Lord Vestey paid no taxes, but he paid £20,000 to the Lloyd George fund and became a peer. His descendant is still there exercising his vote and would do so under the amendment.

Mr. Richard Shepherd: With the best will in the world, let me point out that the amendments do not do what the hon. Gentleman says they do. They will ensure, if they are passed, only that a hereditary peer may attend, not vote, except safeguardingly in the circumstances of extending the life of Parliament. That is what the amendments are about. The exegesis by the hon. Gentleman is a waste of the Committee's time. Some of us want to discuss the amendments and would be grateful if he could focus his intellect on them.

Mr. Linton: I will take my instructions from Mr. Lord on that point, but I would have thought that the hon. Gentleman would accept that the basis on which people are currently Members of the House of Lords is fundamental to the Bill. The Bill tries to change that basis. The amendment tries to continue the present membership for as long as possible.
With one breath, Conservative Members say that the transitional House might last a long time; indeed, it was part of a forceful speech by the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) on Second Reading. With the next breath, they say that, just for the transitional phase, we should allow hereditary peers to sit and to speak in debates. They cannot have it both ways. They believe that the transitional phase is likely to last a long time, but the amendment's effect is to perpetuate the hereditary peerage.
The point that I make by those examples is that it is essential to understand the basis of the present House of Lords. We cannot possibly go into the next millennium with a Parliament in which so many seats have been bought—not so much by the achievements of ancestors, but as outright purchases.

Mr. Shepherd: I shall now say something that will be more sympathetic to the hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Linton).
Amendments Nos. 1 and 23 are obviously safeguard amendments. There is a concern that the House of Lords could vote for the extension of the life of a Parliament, and I have been asked to weigh that possibility. I have to tell my hon. Friends on the Opposition Front Bench that I do not think that such an extension is a reasonable expectation. If I consult my own history and that of my own country, I recall that I was born during the lifetime of a Parliament that had been extended because of the circumstances of war. The life of Parliament was also extended in the first world war. Other than that, our constitutional history shows that the trend has been to reduce the lifetime of Parliaments, from seven to five years. I do not know whether, in future, we will reduce the lifetime to four years, as that would be consonant with


the practice of many other countries. I therefore have to weigh the objectives of Opposition Front Benchers in tabling the amendments.
According to Opposition Front Benchers, clearly we want to preserve the presence of hereditary peers until stage 2 reforms have been implemented. We want also to give them voting and speaking rights if the Government of the day decide to extend Parliament. I should say that I now think of this place as a puppet Chamber which is run by, and follows the will of, Downing street. I have seen that fact demonstrated for over 20 years, and hon. Members who served before this Parliament will know perfectly well where the balance of power lies in such matters.
Do I really think that the House of Lords, even with a hereditary element in it, will vote to extend the life of a Parliament except in the most dire circumstances of a national emergency? Is that a reasonable, legitimate and weighted fear? I ask my hon. Friends to ponder the likelihood of such an extension. I genuinely do not think that it would happen. I do not think that many of us, in truth, think that the purpose of the Labour Government's proposals is merely to extend the life of Parliament. I do not think that many of us are so partisan as to think that that is the Government's objective.
I have the greatest difficulty in taking this group of amendments seriously. The Committee will know from my speech on Second Reading that I believe in an elected second Chamber. I want checks and balances; there is no question about that. Therefore, in trying to weigh up the matter, I ask myself whether I believe that the amendments are amendments of substance. The answer is that I do not. I also do not believe that I want to ensure that Members of the House of Lords should not be
entitled to vote in a division
but should continue to sit in the second Chamber.
We have heard all the arguments on expertise, but the thrust of the Government's manifesto and position is that the House of Lords is not legitimate. That is what it is about. As I look around the Opposition Benches, I realise that many Opposition Members feel that the legitimacy charge neuters the House of Lords. Consequently—in circumstances in which the broad judgment of a nation is contrary to initiatives from Downing street—there is no check or balance.
Some Opposition Members would be quite happy to be constructive in dealing with that situation, if we can build a democratic second Chamber that is able to check, and to reflect the changing pattern of public opinion. Such a Chamber would be able to confront Governments—the current Government are one of the worst offenders I know—argue its corner, and convert public opinion on what it believes are the issues of substance. I accept that that was a partisan point.
I certainly could not vote for amendment Nos. 1 and 23. I do not see the purpose behind them. I do not believe that the appointees of previous Prime Ministers or of the current Prime Minister would extend the life of a Parliament except in the most dire national circumstances, such as war.

Mr. Alan Hurst: It was fascinating—a joy—to hear the eloquent remarks of the hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack). In many ways, he put me in mind of an American lawyer whose client is on

death row and who is looking to any application to a superior court to extend the fateful day. I am certain that, in the minds of at least some Conservative Members, the amendment is one of those. An idea of the period until the fated day was given by the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells), who suggested that it may be 50 or 60 years.
Listening to the arguments of the hon. Member for South Staffordshire, I was put in mind of the case made in 1910 and 1911 for the retention of the House of Lords. At that time, many of the predecessors of Conservative Members would have deployed similar arguments to those made today. If there is such a wealth of talent and such a fund of experience in the House of Lords, I am a little surprised that the Lords appear to be moving meekly along the road to the abolition of the hereditary principle. If they believe what they say on the temporary or transient period, why not stand foursquare against it?

Mr. Wells: If the hon. Gentleman takes 11 from 99, he will find that it is 88. In 1911, the House of Lords, in its present form, was thought to be a temporary measure.

Mr. Hurst: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, because that is exactly the nature of my fear about the proposal. The arguments about talent, experience and expertise can go back further than that. The beauty of standing to speak in this Chamber—albeit one of fairly modern origin, architecturally—is that the same arguments were used to defend the rotten borough system in 1832. The argument was that we would not have those talented people in this House if we left it to the vulgarity of the county elections. Indeed, those who represented county constituencies would have been despised because they did not have the talent and learning of the placemen of the great landed families. Eventually, however, we vulgar and coarse people succeeded, and the rotten boroughs were swept away, stage by stage, until they finally disappeared.
The hon. Member for South Staffordshire makes a fascinating case. Many years ago, I read a book entitled "The Case for Conservation" by a former Member of this House—and, later, Lord Chancellor—Lord Hailsham. I shall quote from it, although it is not my view. The book put forward all the advantages of birth and talent, and stated that talent should be preferred, as against numbers. The hon. Member for South Staffordshire talked of constitutional vandalism and, of course, the preferred classes regard those who are not of their class as vandals at the gate who are about to pull down—not a watch, the rather delicate analogy that is used—but a great edifice of power that has existed for centuries.
I felt for a moment that the hon. Member for South Staffordshire was about to quote the immortal Conservative lines that appear in the book by Lord Hailsham and also, I believe, in Shakespeare:
Take but degree away …
And, hark! what discord follows".
I believe that the amendment is a delaying tactic on the part of the Conservative Opposition, who are not yet genuine converts to the kind of democracy proposed by the Bill. The amendment is a device and an attempt to delay the will of this House and the people of this country.

Mr. Tyrie: Where in the Bill is a case put forward for genuine democracy for the upper House?

Mr. Hurst: I would hesitate to reply in great detail to that intervention, since I fear that I would move outside


the confines of the Committee debate. The Opposition amendments—this is the clearest that they have tabled—are devices to thwart the purpose of the Bill, and I urge the Committee to vote against the amendment.

Mr. William Cash: I agree very much with my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd), and I have difficulty in understanding the purpose of the amendments. I cannot understand why those on the Opposition Front Bench cannot grasp the fact that we have conceded—for very good reasons—that the hereditary principle is indefensible, as I said on Second Reading. Having done that, why are we going in for a mish-mash of an amendment, which partly accepts and partly rejects the idea? It is rather like the Abbé Sieyès and his different types of constitutions—some with holes in the middle and some with holes at the bottom, leaking all the way. Why do we not accept the fact that we object to the hereditary principle and convert the 91 hereditary peers—if we accept the proposal to which I thought the Government had committed themselves in their White Paper—into life peers? We all know that there are some incredibly worthy and very distinguished Members of the House of Lords, many of whom are hereditary peers.

Mr. Grieve: That may be a wise course of action, but does my hon. Friend agree that it would be helpful, while we are debating the interim stage, if the Government had the principle and integrity to tell us that they were prepared to accept the Weatherill amendment? That would at least enable us to know where we stand in the discussion.

Mr. Cash: I was somewhat surprised to hear the Leader of the House prevaricating over that the other day. I do not understand the purpose of that, because the White Paper seems pretty clear on the subject. However, that is not the purpose of my remarks.
I do not under stand why we cannot accept that the hereditary principle in the House of Lords is at an end. If we are to preserve 91 current hereditary peers—for good reasons, because some appointment is probably a good idea to prevent competition between the Houses—they should be converted to life peers and should be allowed to continue the distinguished service to which my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack) referred.
Given that the House has accepted the principle of the Bill, I find it difficult to understand how we can move amendments to restrict the hereditary principle in a way that would be inconsistent with the long title, even though there are other amendments to deal with that. The selection of such amendments is a little incongruous, to say that least—although that is a matter for you, Mr. Lord, not for me.
There are some serious questions for us to address. As in many other cases, if we have alighted on a principle, it would not be a bad idea if we stuck to it.

Mr. Patrick Nicholls: It is not often that I have the opportunity to tell my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) that I seriously disagree with him. We usually find ourselves agreeing on matters European

and I find it slightly novel that I should be so in favour of his analysis of our constitutional position in Europe but should not share the conclusions that he reaches on our constitutional arrangements in this country. There must be some lesson to be drawn from that.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack) made a persuasive case for the amendment. It was also a persuasive case for the preservation of the hereditary principle. He was approaching the amendment from a conservative point of view, working on the idea that, if something is not broken, there is no particular need to amend it. If something is working, it does not matter if there is some illogicality about it. A product of 700 years of history and constitutional evolution is more likely to be worth while than something dreamed up by a temporary royal commission, however distinguished Lord Wakeham may be in presiding over it. All my hon. Friend's arguments, advanced with his usual charm, eloquence and elegance, could have been made in defence of the hereditary peerage.
The wider arguments and those on the amendment have been bedevilled by the embarrassment that even Conservatives feel about defending the hereditary principle, on the grounds that the upper House is not democratic. I shall be ruder about them in a moment, but I have some sympathy with some of the contributions of Labour Members, who have detected some illogicality in the approach to the subject adopted by some Conservative Members.
We have put ourselves into the position of having to say that we cannot defend the House of Lords, because it is not democratic. Obviously, it is not democratic—although it may be a mechanism for delivering a democratic form of government—but that is not the question that we should be considering. The question is whether the Queen in Parliament—the three estates, working together as a sovereign Parliament—is a democratic institution and delivers democracy.
To say of one Chamber—remember that it could also be said of the monarch, as an exercise in historical logic—that it is not democratic, is as true and, frankly, as ridiculous as saying that, in a motor car, one can blame the engine because it is not the wheels, or that, in a body, one can criticise a hand because it is not a foot. We should be considering the totality of our constitutional arrangements.
The House of Lords, as it is currently constituted—and, to a lesser extent, as it would be constituted if the amendment were made—is a practical mechanism for carrying out certain functions that matter very much to anybody who has a genuine interest in, or understanding of, democracy. It can warn, influence, criticise and, if necessary, embarrass, but it can never win against the democratically elected Government as represented in the House of Commons. I should have thought that any true democrat would say that that was about right.
How can one have an upper House that can warn, counsel, influence and oppose, but not succeed, unless it does not have democratic legitimacy in its own right? The moment that it has such legitimacy, it will assert its right to stand up against the House of Commons.
One solution would be to have a purely random process for filling the upper House: one could ask Ernie to choose Lords as well as premium bond winners, so they would be arbitrary and beyond reproach or pressure; but legislators


chosen in that way would not understand for one moment why they were there. The genius of the present system is that those who are there understand why and take their responsibilities seriously.

Dr. Starkey: I am having some difficulty following the hon. Gentleman's argument. Is he saying that the democratic legitimacy of Parliament as a whole is all the stronger because this democratic Chamber is complemented by a completely undemocratic one?

Mr. Nicholls: I see that I should have spoken more slowly. I will try scattering those pearls again. The point that I was making—even some Labour Members seemed able to understand it, although they may not have agreed with it—is that we must consider the totality of Parliament and ask whether it is democratic; it is not enough simply to look at one House of Parliament and ask that question of it. If the hon. Lady talks to her colleagues and reads Hansard tomorrow, she may not agree with my point, but she will perhaps manage to grasp it.
Where are we likely to end up? Conservative Members have advocated an elected upper House, because that would be democratic, have legitimacy and be fine; but it would not be fine at all. A wholly elected upper House would either go the whole way with the Government of the day or it would not; if the upper House had been up for election at the general election, both Houses would be completely controlled by one party. [HON. MEMBERS: "Good."] I thought that that would appeal to some Labour Members, but it would not be an exercise in democracy; it would be the abnegation of democracy.

Mr. Andrew Mackinlay: The hon. Gentleman's point about elections assumes that they would be held on the same day for both Houses. The difficulties to which he refers could be overcome by having a rolling programme of elections, as with the United States Senate and many other legislatures, so that the Chambers never gain their legitimacy in a snapshot of time; it is also enshrined in our law that the House of Commons is supreme and will prevail. Existing functions of the House of Lords are important, but its constitution is bad. If we have a rolling programme, we can have the best of both worlds.

Mr. Nicholls: The hon. Gentleman makes a very fair point, which was considerably better than the point made by the hon. Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Dr. Starkey). The difficulty is that the consequence of what he is saying is that, to avoid having a totalitarian Government in which both Houses of Parliament would be under the control of the same party, there would have to be perpetual conflict in which each Chamber said to the other, "Our credentials are as good as yours." Even if, in due course, we have a cronies' Chamber, in which only 10 per cent. of Members, or perhaps 10 out of 200, are democratically elected, the problem is that those 10 will say to the others, "We have the right to be difficult because we were elected and have greater legitimacy than you."
If the amendment were made, its achievement would be that Members of the second Chamber would still be able to warn, counsel, influence and embarrass. That says something about democracy in a wider sense than simply pointing out that the upper Chamber in itself is not democratic.
My next point puts down a marker for whatever proposals ultimately emerge. There is no doubt that, if the amendment is not made and the only way to enter the upper House is to be democratically elected, the quality of legislation in its totality will decrease dramatically. All sorts of worthy and useful people who currently make a contribution could not be possibly be expected to undergo the electoral process that we undergo. That would be a mistake.
Whether the amendment is defeated today or on another occasion, the process on which we are embarked is constitutional vandalism because we are throwing out a tried and proven system, not according to the argument of legitimacy or because of the spurious idea that one Chamber is undemocratic, but as the hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Linton) let slip—although Labour Members no longer use the language of the sans-culottes—because of the absolute detestation that oozes from Labour Members' every pore when they consider a hereditary peerage.

Mr. Linton: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Nicholls: In a moment. The irony is that, in this day and age, hereditary peers are in middle-class occupations. They consist of lawyers, farmers, doctors and working actors. Their social composition is about the same as that of the parliamentary Labour party and that at least ought to endear them to Labour Members.

Several hon. Members: rose—

The Second Deputy Chairman: Order. Has the hon. Gentleman completed his remarks?

Mr. Nicholls: I am sorry, Mr. Lord. I was pausing to collect my thoughts before I gave way to the hon. Member for Battersea.

Mr. Linton: To say that I detest Members of the House of Lords would be a gross distortion of the point that I was making. I merely challenge their right to sit in this country's legislature solely on the grounds that their father or grandfather was made a member of the peerage. I would no more detest somebody for being a Member of Parliament than I would detest my constituents for not being in Parliament, but it is totally different to question peers' right to sit in our legislature.

Mr. Nicholls: I said that the hon. Gentleman loathed the principle of heredity—and, if he considers the circumstances in which some of those hereditary peers of whom he disapproves got into the House and compares them with the present crop of life peers who have entered the House since 1997, he may want to pause and reflect.

Mr. Forth: Some of my colleagues have pointed out the apparent difficulties that we have in reconciling the fact that we are not yet wholeheartedly abandoning the hereditary principle and the fact that many of us are not ready fully to embrace whatever alternative may emerge. The way to resolve that temporary conflict is to emphasise, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack) rightly did in moving the amendment, that we are considering, by definition, a transitional arrangement. We are discussing an interim


arrangement, somewhere between what we have now, which the Government want to sweep away, as they said in their manifesto, and the position in the future. We are not sure when that time in the future will be. Ministers have said many times that it is not too far away, but they will forgive Conservative Members for being a little uneasy about that, as we have heard it all before. It is precisely because the Government seem so uncertain about what they want to do and where they want to take us in this vital component of our governance and constitution that we are entitled to the degree of unease that we feel.
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That unease is evident in today's debate, and it will remain so. We are trying to hold a constructive and analytical debate about something that is built on shifting sands and about which we cannot be certain. We cannot be sure of the time scale involved, and we certainly do not know about the end-point. That puts us all in great difficulty.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire has suggested that, as part of the transitional or interim arrangement, it would be better to try to hold on to what some of us perceive to be the good, or the best, elements of the present arrangement, even as we try to work out what will happen in the interim and beyond. The debate has focused on the concept of legitimacy as it affects a role in the legislature. All hon. Members readily take it for granted that this Chamber has total legitimacy because it is elected. Yet even that can be subject to some debate, because some hon. Members would say that the degree of legitimacy of an elected Chamber might depend, in some circumstances, on the method by which it was elected.
I stress that it is not for today, but there is a debate to be had about the first-past-the-post system, as opposed to various forms of proportionality. Some of us would argue that many forms of proportionality would reduce or even remove the legitimacy from an elected Chamber—but, as I say, that debate is for another day. I mention it simply in the context of the concept of the legitimacy of Chambers of legislatures, and to introduce the thought that few elements even in that regard are absolute.
We are talking about relative concepts of legitimacy in legislatures in an interim environment. That is the context of the debate, and it is no surprise that there should be a degree of uncertainty among Conservative Members, and of fuzziness of thought among Labour Members, as it is very difficult for us all to relate to the complexity of the issues before us.
So then we must consider the role and legitimacy—or otherwise—of the upper House, and we must take into account its accountability, the degree to which it is representative, the extent of its expertise and its independence. All those factors have a role in the way in which a Chamber in a legislature operates.
Some hon. Members would argue that Members of a Chamber in a legislature who are not elected have no legitimacy. They would say that, although they may have accountability and claim to be representative, those Members may not be independent, given the development of the role of the party and of whipping as we have come to know it in our tradition. So we are already involved in

a trade-off: although we may say that elected Members have the pluses of being representative and accountable, we must also accept that they probably fall down seriously with regard to independence. Whether they qualify on the basis of expertise is another matter altogether.
A member of a group of very bright schoolchildren recently asked me what qualifications were needed to become a Member of Parliament. That was a very interesting question. I had to tell the children—I hope with my characteristic honesty—that there were none that I knew of. I said that all one needed was the gall, effrontery and exhibitionism to put oneself forward to one's party and to battle through the selection process. After that, I said, one needed to get lucky on election and to win enough votes, and that that was about the limit of it.
The bright young person who had asked the question seemed a bit surprised, having expected me to talk about A-levels or degrees, or some such. The one thing missing from a Chamber consisting of elected representatives is expertise. Members may have many qualities, but expertise is not necessarily one of them. That depends very much on their background.
However, the upper Chamber, as it has developed over hundreds of years, has advantages which in many ways complement the disadvantages that I suggest are part of a fully elected House. Those disadvantages include a lack of political independence, because of party affiliation and whipping, and a lack of expertise other than that developed during periods spent not in the House.
The hon. Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Hancock) has told us how he acquired an enormous range of expertise during a previous brief period in the House of Commons. In 1987, his constituents, in a moment of madness, denied us that expertise. The hon. Gentleman has told us how he developed further expertise during his 10-year sabbatical, which sufficiently impressed his voters that they sent him back to share it with us.
The hon. Gentleman's story is reassuring, and I shall cherish it and remember it often during our debate. However, it does not quite give us a definitive answer to the conundrum that faces us—what to do about the upper House during the interim period. The amendment forces us to think about the contribution that the hereditary element has made in the upper House.
That brings us to the peculiarity of the 91. We are being asked to accept that the hereditary element is totally unacceptable to Labour Members, a fact that has been reinforced by several speeches today. Yet, the same Labour Members may be prepared to accept that 91 of those totally unacceptable people should be allowed—nay, encouraged—to continue to operate in an upper Chamber for some as yet unspecified period. That forces us to imagine how we should distinguish between the validity of the contribution that the 91 may continue to make, as opposed to the contribution that the other 600 or 700 will be unable to make.
We have not been told, except by suggestion—we do not yet know what will happen because none of the suggestions is definite—whether that conundrum will be resolved by some electoral process. It seems that people who until now have been unable to vote at all will be given a vote for the first time in their own House. They will, it seems, in some mysterious way, elect from among


themselves a representative group. That group need not necessarily be elected according to expertise, but will perhaps be elected on some other form of representation. We are not sure of the basis on which the 91 will be elected, but they will continue to operate in the upper House.
The trouble is that we are in danger of undermining, or losing, some of the valuable contributions to which the amendment relates. Those contributions include the independence that the hereditary element gives to the upper House—an independence that I do not think has yet been stressed enough. They include a balancing of the representativeness and accountability in which the House of Commons takes such pride.
The independence of the hated hereditary element has its own value in our political process, and we must not throw it away without serious consideration. Only the hereditary element gives that independence. Even the patronage of appointment under the life peerage system does not give the same degree of independence. It gives an element of independence, but it cannot give the totality.
The amendment allows us to consider the advantages to be obtained from a continuing input from, and involvement of, the hereditary peers while we consider what lies beyond the interim period.

Mr. Hancock: The right hon. Gentleman argues powerfully against support of amendment No. 2, which relates to the 91 hereditary peers. He has convinced the Committee that he will join those of us who vote against that amendment when we reach it. However, is he advancing the option of having all or none of the hereditary peers, thus supporting the line that I would take?

The Second Deputy Chairman: The right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) has been very careful in the way in which he has referred to the next group of amendments, and I should be grateful if he would maintain that course.

Mr. Forth: I am grateful, Mr. Lord.
I was referring to the opening speech of my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire, who outlined the contribution that we have come to expect from the hereditary element in the upper House. My hon. Friend wishes to retain that, at least for the interim period. I cannot overstress the fact that, as long as we are uncertain about the length of the interim period, we owe it to the people of the United Kingdom to be extremely cautious about how we change the upper House before settling the arrangements for its final composition. That point is the key to the amendment.
My hon. Friend's amendment allows us to consider—allowing for the views of Her Majesty's Government, their manifesto commitment and the Second Reading of the Bill—our obligation to ensure that the upper House serves the people in the best way possible during the interim period. My hon. Friend, elegantly, and with typical ingenuity and fairness, has found a way in which to allow us to continue to draw on the contribution made by the hereditary element.

Mr. David Heath: Would the right hon. Gentleman consider how his argument applies to amendment No. 23,

which is in the group that we are considering? What unique contribution—above that of any concerned citizen—can disqualified hereditary peers make in determining whether a Parliament should be extended? Why should we not leave that matter to the National Farmers Union, or to the listeners of Jimmy Young, or to the Frome Collegians football club? What uniquely qualifies the hereditary peers to make that contribution?

Mr. Forth: Simply, they are there, and they have an accumulation of experience with which to judge the point. Amendment No. 23 would allow the hereditary peers to stand as a guarantee, a backstop and a safety net against the possibility that a Government with an overwhelmingly large majority and an arrogance and contempt for the parliamentary process would be able to take the final step that some of us fear, of trying to put themselves in power indefinitely.

Sir Nicholas Lyell: Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is yet a further reason why an upper House—including one of the present constitution—should be able to prevent that? When the House of Commons seeks to extend the length of a Parliament, it does not act democratically. The House of Commons is elected for a period of up to five years, and it would be not by the will of the electorate, but by the will of the House and the majority party that it sought to extend the Government's power. That decision would come not from the electorate but from the Government's own majority.

Mr. Forth: My right hon. and learned Friend makes a typically incisive and important point, and I may explore the contents of amendment No. 23 in a moment. We have before us a difficult mixture of convention, unwritten constitution and flexibility in our constitutional arrangements. All that poses certain real problems. Let us imagine that we were faced with a national emergency. Parliament might want to retain the right to alter its electoral arrangements. However, we have the safeguard that Parliament can do that only if it is agreed both by the elected House and by the other place, on which we rely for a degree of independence of thought—independent even of the electoral process—to give us the safety that we have enjoyed over many centuries. That balance is under threat, and that is another reason why my hon. Friend seeks to restore balance through his amendment, and to give us the reassurance that we need in the present changing circumstances.
Let me return to expertise. It is often suggested that the upper House contains a range of expertise. In an earlier exchange, it was pointed out that it contains people from the arts, the military, the business world, the Church, farming and so on. However, that argument is something of a double-edged sword. I have always been slightly uneasy about the idea of people with expertise, as they may also have a narrowness of view that limits the contribution that they are able to make. The whole point is that the people who arrive in this Chamber—by whatever process, and however qualified or unqualified they may seem to be—seek in the best way we can to represent many constituents. It is because we are accountable and have daily to cover a wide range of subjects that we can be beholden to no single group but must take a broad view.
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One of the dangers is that Members of the upper House are able to take just one view, and that their contribution may in some respects be limited. I submit that that is so in the case of life peers. Funnily enough, that argument does not apply to the hereditaries, who may have a broader view precisely because of their rather odd background and their independence.

Mr. Linton: Why does the fact that someone's great-grandfather was a custard powder manufacturer give that person a broader or more incisive view of events now?

Mr. Forth: Because of the element of independence that I am trying to stress. The peculiarity of the system of life peerages is that such peerages are often—more often than not, I suggest—given because of experience or expertise in one particular sphere. It may be a very worthy and central sphere. Church Members of the upper Chamber have a very particular role to play, but it is in many ways a narrow role. Given the complexity of modern society, it is—many might regret this—an increasingly unrepresentative role, although they are not supposed to be there in a representative capacity.

Mr. Edward Garnier: No doubt the hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Linton) thought that he was being highly amusing by referring to a custard powder manufacturer, but surely the important point is not what the grandfather did then but what the hereditary peer does and knows now. It is his life experience, not that of his grandfather, which is important. The fact that the hon. Gentleman used to be, I understand, a writer for The Guardian has no bearing on his ability as Member of Parliament. If his grandfather had been a custard power manufacturer, what would the editor of The Guardian have made of that?

Mr. Forth: I will not be tempted to follow on from what my hon. and learned Friend has said. If I were, I might digress into a discussion of what some Labour Members did in their earlier life or what some of their predecessors did, and I am not sure that that would be a very productive route to take. My hon. and learned Friend has made his point.
I have tried to emphasise the fact that the amendment raises some very important issues. It gives us an opportunity to reflect on where we as a Parliament want to position ourselves in the vital phase before us and in the face of the uncertainty ahead as we go from where we are to where we might end up. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire for giving us the opportunity to think about the contribution that we want the upper House to make and the way we want it to be made, and to flush out some of the details of the mysterious 91—who they might be and where they might come from—in the context of the contribution that we have rather come to assume from the upper House, and particularly from its hereditary element.
I yield to none in my admiration for the contribution that the hereditary element has made, is making and will, I hope, continue to make. I support the amendment in the expectation that that invaluable contribution can continue until we resolve properly the role of the upper House.

Mr. Kenneth Clarke: I agree with my right hon. and hon. Friends who have said that those on our party's Front Bench have tabled a curious amendment, but it is a curious Bill. It has rather more to commend it than some of my colleagues with whom I have agreed have said.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack). Once we have embarked on the process of reforming the second Chamber, we must move on to have a wholly elected second Chamber. I cannot believe that any second Chamber will have lasting political legitimacy until we go that far. Indeed, I should go so far as to say that if we put some halfhearted measure in place, the result will be that future generations will regard this Parliament as something of a laughing stock for putting a quango in place, believing that that is the kind of senate that should be created for British democracy in 1999.

Sir Patrick Cormack: rose—

Mr. Clarke: I shall give way in a moment. Like me, my hon. Friend appreciates the fact that the Bill is a result of the Government not having a policy to amend the constitution but making ad hoc changes to the constitution and then being driven by events to make it up as they go along. The dog's breakfast that we have before us is designed to create a dog's breakfast of an institution to be known as an interim House of Lords. I share the suspicions of many that the interim period might be quite lengthy. It is in that curious context that we have to consider its composition.

Sir Patrick Cormack: I must point out that I did not say that I was in favour of a wholly elected House of Lords. I said that we had not yet come to a conclusion on that. I also pointed out that it was difficult to envisage an elected House of Lords that would have a Cross-Bench element, which is one of the reasons why I have some misgivings.

Mr. Clarke: My apologies to my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire; I had the right part of the country, but it was my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) who expressed the view with which I agree. I am sorry that, on this occasion, I am more radical than my hon. Friend on the Front Bench, but I believe that it should be a wholly elected Chamber. I cannot believe that this House or the Government is going to come to any other conclusion in due course. As we proceed, the sheer absurdity of the details of the interim measure will be made ever more clear.
The amendment addresses the composition of the interim House. We are asked to consider what it is about another place that might be tainted by its continuing to hear within it the voice of hereditary peers without a vote. The moment one considers the composition of the group that will have the task of holding the Government to account for an indefinite period in the second Chamber, it becomes clear that the second Chamber will not be seriously damaged.
Probably the most legitimate members of the interim House will be the life peers, who are largely appointed by recent Prime Ministers on a mixture of political patronage


and distinction in their careers. I treat them all with the highest regard—many are my personal friends. Many have held office in this House. When I go to listen to their debates, I see sitting in front of me the House of Commons of 20 years ago. They used to be the country's leading politicians, scientists and artists. They are a sort of council of elders, reminding us of the great and good of a former generation. They are the most legitimate Members whom the upper Chamber will keep in place.
Also in place will be the senior bishops of the established Church. There will, I gather, be a further block of appointments made by the present Government, comprising 50 or so men and women who will be there because they will have undertaken on all occasions to follow the line set out by the press officer of Downing street and to vote in all Divisions to make sure that the Government's position is kept intact. My colleagues and the Liberal party will have the pleasure of appointing a no doubt smaller number of people with a similar instruction.
We are also told that a new quango will be appointed to appoint people who presumably will have to undertake to have no party affiliation, but to be in some way representative of the outside world. In other words, a mixture of patronage and the honours list will provide Members of the House of Lords, which will be the second Chamber indefinitely. It is a ridiculous proposal.
I have forgotten the most important element of all. If future amendments are accepted, or if the Government keep to their word as given to my noble Friends, 91 Members will be hereditary peers. Some may be the grandchildren of custard manufacturers. They will be people who will have been subject to the greatest strictures by Labour Members—

The Second Deputy Chairman: Order. I remind the right hon. and learned Gentleman that that is not relevant to the amendment that we are discussing. Will he please confine his remarks to the amendment?

Mr. Clarke: Subject to your guidance, Mr. Lord, I shall try to make my comments relevant by saying that it is this collection of people into which it is said it would be quite wrong to allow to intrude the voice of other hereditary peers for the interim period. There is no great threat to the proceedings of the truncated remnant of the old House of Lords which will be kept in place under the Bill if we allow hereditary peers to have a voice, if not a vote. They might be considered some guarantee of independence of—perhaps even of modest hostility towards—the present Government. If we are looking to a second House to help hold the Executive to account, I do not think that it would be weakened if we accepted the amendment; on occasions, it might be strengthened.
I cannot see the objections in principle that have been made. The hon. Members for Braintree (Mr. Hurst) and for Battersea (Mr. Linton) are still excited about the hereditary principle, but they presumably will accept 91 hereditary peers. The idea that the Bill sweeps away the hereditary principle and replaces it with something more democratic, more legitimate and better is not remotely the case. We are embarked on a foolish course in accepting this as an interim stage in the Government's proposals.
I know that, with the assistance of the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) and others, my noble Friend Lord Wakeham, who is also a

personal friend, is meant to produce a policy. Even then, I understand that the policy is closely guided not towards democracy but towards blocs or groups that are supposed to represent interests in the wider world. Our mediaeval ancestors who created the House did a better job than this quango is likely to do for the 21st century in coming up with anything of that kind.
If we are to have an interim House, which is all that the Bill is about, it is absurdly dogmatic to say that all hereditary peers should be silent. They will lose their legislative power if they lose the right to vote in Divisions, but, in the peculiarly Mickey Mouse institution that we are putting in place for an indefinite period, their voice could on occasion be valuable.

Mr. Garnier: With all due humility, I congratulate those of my right hon. and hon. Friends who have exposed this afternoon the Government's embarrassment and the vacuity of the thought behind their proposed reforms to the other place. My hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack) began to expose their position, which is inept both politically and intellectually. Anyone who heard the speeches of my right hon. and hon. Friends this afternoon could reach only that conclusion.
One of my colleagues has said that he is a great respecter of the hereditary principle and that that was why he did not bet on horses. I occasionally do, and I respect the hereditary principle in the constitution. I accept that the arithmetic of this place nowadays means that the hereditary system in the other place is going, and, some say, the sooner it goes, the better. However, I object to the way in which the Government have made proposals that signally fail to meet their own arguments. That is why I applaud the amendment to allow hereditary peers to speak, even if they are not allowed to vote in Divisions.
For all the reasons so ably put by my hon. Friend the Member for Teignbridge (Mr. Nicholls), I suggest that clause 1 is a total failure. It fails because the Government did not ask themselves several basic questions. They failed to ask about the purpose of our constitution and of the Houses of Parliament or about the proper relationship between this House and the other. It may be that the logical conclusion of the debate is, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) said, to have two elected houses; or, as the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) has said, it may be that we should have only one House of Commons and a unicameral parliamentary system. Whatever the answer, the question is not properly answered by the Bill. The failure is nowhere more evident than in clause 1.
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When one considers the proper role of Parliament or of an upper House or another House, one legitimately comes to the questions that my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) drew out. There are some minus points, but the other undemocratic House brings many plus points to our three-legged constitution or governmental system. It does this House and the Government no good to salami-slice away at particular aspects of our constitution, whether on the Union front or the House of Lords front, and produce half-baked, ill-considered solutions. I reject utterly the Government's proposals for an interim second Chamber. I hope that the


Committee will be persuaded, if not by my ineloquent arguments, by those of my right hon. and hon. Friends who have stripped bare the Government's ineptitude.
The Government's proposals are confused. They will lead to further trouble and to further dissatisfaction with the way in which Parliament works among the public, who are already becoming increasingly dissatisfied by the way in which this Government and Executive treat this House and Parliament as a whole. Unless amended and exposed to the arguments of my right hon. and hon. Friends, the proposals will continue to damage our constitution. I urge Labour Members to join us in the Lobby, and I hope that I can persuade my hon. Friends the Members for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) and for Stone (Mr. Cash) to do so as well.

Mr. Robert Maclennan: I, too, am grateful to the hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack) for moving the amendment, not because it is meritorious—it is not—but because it has created space in the debate to allow some free spirits among his colleagues, notably the hon. Members for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) and for Stone (Mr. Cash), to make extraordinarily sensible speeches. They showed that the Conservative party has within its ranks some people who are prepared to be constructive about the future of our constitution. Many of us take heart from that as we look to a cross-party alliance to make sense of an historical anachronism.
I also took some satisfaction from the speech of the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke). As he spoke before me, he does not have the opportunity to head-butt me as he sometimes has in the past. He recognised that the principle of election is what we are moving to. I do not think that he is very excited by the possibility, but, if he sees that as the way in which we are going, perhaps he should welcome the anomalies that he thinks are created by the way in which the Government have chosen to go. The great good sense of the British people may come into play and make it impossible to propose a nonsensical second Chamber, such as that about which he expressed concern, with any credit to the Government. That would rule out the prospect of a House of mixed groups of representatives of different interests posing in some way as legitimate or representative.
A couple of serious themes that emerged from Opposition Members' speeches should not go unchallenged. One is that hereditary peers are, in some sense, more independent than appointed peers-certainly more independent than Members of the House of Commons. I do not see the logic of, or evidence for, that argument.

Sir Patrick Cormack: indicated dissent.

Mr. Maclennan: I discharge the hon. Member for South Staffordshire from having made that point. I regret that I did not hear him speak, so I cannot pronounce with authority on his speech. I am very sorry about that, but I encountered unfortunate travel problems.
Several other Conservative Members made the point that hereditary peers were peculiarly independent, yet their lordships' voting record does not prove that.

The point was deployed extensively on Second Reading that their overwhelming propensity is to support the Conservative party, and, when informed that Rome is burning and in danger, to come from wherever they are and do what they are told by the Conservative Whips.
There is no reason to believe that the survival of hereditary peers would retain any independence that would safeguard any part of our constitution if it became threatened. From the record during the lifetime of the previous Conservative Administration, I do not see any evidence of hereditary peers playing a particularly noteworthy part, even in criticism of some of the, shall we say, incursions into what might have been thought to be sacred constitutional territory.

Sir Patrick Cormack: The right hon. Gentleman is replying to a speech that he did not hear, and was not made. The point made from this Dispatch Box was simply that it would be a practical solution for an interim period to allow that 40 per cent. who play such a prominent part in the Committees and deliberations of the House of Lords to continue to do so, without voting, until the second stage has been agreed. That is the case that has been advanced, but it is not the one to which he is replying.

Mr. Maclennan: With the greatest respect to the hon. Gentleman, who has considerable experience, as I do, of this House, the debate is not entirely turning on his half-hour contribution at the beginning of it. A number of other interesting speeches have been made from the Conservative Benches, and it is to those in particular that I was addressing my remarks.
When the Conservative Government, under the inspiration of their then leader, Lady Thatcher, decided to wind up the government of London—a move that was a profound constitutional monstrosity—there was very little sign of independence among peers, and no more independence was manifested by hereditary peers than by appointed peers. Once a person becomes a Member of the upper House, regardless of whether that person has been appointed or is there by accident of inheritance, he or she is a free spirit, capable of exercising independence, and does not owe his or her position in that House to the continuing approval of the Whips or the Government. None the less, time and again, their lordships have demonstrated their willingness to step into line behind the lead of the Conservative party. That is a strong argument for rebutting and rejecting the amendments.

Sir Nicholas Lyell: Is the right hon. Gentleman being fair to the upper House in saying that it fails to demonstrate independence? Accepting amendment No. 1 would mean that the so-called backwoodsmen could not be trotted out either to support or to defeat individual measures. Does he recollect that, had it not been for a considerable turnout of backwoodsmen—regardless of whether it is right or wrong, although he will certainly have thought it right—the upper House would have defeated proposals for the community charge?

Mr. Maclennan: The right hon. and learned Gentleman has a fair point; I would not quarrel with that. However, I do not think that it invalidates my general case that, time after time, when one might have hoped that some independence would be exercised, it was not.
There is a certain seductiveness in the argument that there should be a check in another place on the possibility of, for example, the Government deciding to extend the life of a Parliament beyond the five allotted years. I am attracted to that view. There is a case for strengthening the power of the upper House over constitutional measures and, indeed, constitutional conventions, which I should like to have embodied in fundamental constitutional law. It would be very healthy if Governments were not able to overrule our international commitment to the European convention on human rights, and if the upper House were empowered to prevent them from doing so, but an appointed or hereditary upper House does not have the constitutional legitimacy to make that an acceptable route down which to march.
Although there is support on the Liberal Democrat Benches for seeking to protect fundamental constitutional provision, such as the determination that Parliament shall not extend its life beyond five years, I very much hope that the Government will look for other means of facilitating the further check on the Executive when they come to think about the reconstitution of the second Chamber beyond the period on which the Bill particularly focuses.

Mr. Gerald Howarth: I am grateful to be called to speak in these important proceedings. I am a Conservative, and I am proud to be a Conservative. One of the reasons why I am a Conservative is that I believe in conserving that which is good about our country, and I believe that we should change things only if they really need to be changed.
There have been differences of view on the Conservative Benches—only the hon. Members for Braintree (Mr. Hurst) and for Battersea (Mr. Linton) have spoken from the Labour Benches—on what might replace the other place. However, this side of the Committee has been absolutely clear on one thing this, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) rightly said, is a dog's breakfast of a Bill. If we were in charge, this measure would not appear, because we do not believe in the Government's proposals.
The Bill should correctly be entitled, "The House of Lords (Destruction of a Thousand Years of British History) Bill". I make no pretence; I believe in the hereditary principle. When we debate the proposed composition of the second Chamber, it might be appropriate to raise the question and role of the monarchy.
As my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack) so eloquently suggested, their lordships have something to offer during the proposed interim. The reason why my right hon. and hon. Friends have expressed differing views on a new upper Chamber has been given before. Others have suggested that there should be a wholly elected upper Chamber. I do not believe that that would be right, because it would put that House into conflict with this one. It is precisely because there have been so many such differences that all previous attempts to change the arrangements have failed. That is why I believe that the Government's proposal is fundamentally flawed and why the measure betrays their arrogance. They have decided to bring the Bill before the Committee without suggesting anything in place of the House of Lords.
According to an opinion poll conducted by MORI last November, 68 per cent. of the people—pretty democratic, I would have thought—felt that the Government should not introduce the change without proposing an alternative. In that survey, 68 per cent. of respondents said:
Leave things as they are for the moment until all the details of the reform have been decided.

Mr. Winnick: I wanted to congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his opening remarks. He came out with the blunt truth—that he believes the hereditary principle should be retained. Whereas those on the Opposition Front Bench and others of his colleagues are covering up their views in every conceivable way, the hon. Gentleman stated his point of view honestly and fairly. That is basically the point of view of the entire Conservative party, and it is unfortunate that those on the Front Bench did not have the honesty to say what they believe in, as the hon. Gentleman did.

Mr. Howarth: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for recognising that I am honest. I am not sure that, it is always advisable or profitable to be honest in politics, but I have the advantage of being on the Back Benches.
My right hon. and hon. Friends have pointed out that the Bill will unquestionably go through both Houses of Parliament. They must, therefore, deal with the position after the Bill becomes law. It is entirely fair for them to argue that we must live with the realpolitik and try to improve the Bill, in so far as it is capable of improvement. That is why I support the amendment.
The public made it clear through that opinion poll that they believe that the Government are misguided in their proposal not to suggest alternatives to the current arrangements before abolishing that which already exists.
It is important that we consider the merits of the amendment relating to the role that hereditary peers could play—a non-voting role, but a speaking role. The Committee must understand that the hereditaries play an extremely important part in the daily life of the upper House. Most of those who preside over the proceedings in the House of Lords when the Lord Chancellor is not there are hereditary peers. They do it on the relatively small amount of their daily allowance. They do not have the sort of salaries that even we in this place have.
We should not ignore the active part that hereditary peers play in the activities of the other place, compared with the less active part played by many of those who are appointees, whether appointed by the Conservative party or the Labour party. It is true that the other place has the advantage, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe said, of previous Members of this place—illustrious Members who have guided the destiny of the nation. It would be fair to say that, for some of them, life in the more relaxed atmosphere of the other place is less enchanting than the cut and thrust of formulating policy and driving it through in this place. Therefore, the part that they play in the other place is, so to speak, a retired part.
Other life peers are great captains of industry. I always marvel at the fact that, whenever hon. Members stand up in this place to speak on behalf of a commercial interest in which they have an interest, they are immediately dismissed.
I well remember when Jim Prior, as he then was, spoke in a debate on extending further Government finance to GEC in order to enable the company to develop the winning formula that would ensure that the airborne early warning programme on the Nimrod went ahead. Everybody listened, until someone said, "Is he not chairman of GEC?", at which point everybody fell about laughing, saying, "Of course he would say that, wouldn't he?" If the noble Lord Prior stands up in the other place and speaks in his capacity as chairman of GEC, their lordships flock in to listen attentively because he has something to offer.
It is fair to say that those who are captains of industry do not attend as regularly in the other place as those who are hereditary peers. That is hardly surprising—they have businesses to run, so they tend to come only occasionally, when the debate affects the industry in which they work.

Angela Smith: The crux of the hon. Gentleman's argument seems to be that hereditary peers do a better, more effective job in the House of Lords. How does he square that with his earlier statement that he supports the amendment?

Mr. Howarth: I support the amendment because it will ensure that the hereditary peers will be there. I have tried to make my position clear. Lest the hon. Lady is in any doubt, let me repeat it: I oppose the measure, but I will support the amendment tabled by my hon. Friends because it at least ensures an element of continuity. It will also ensure that, in the other place, there will be those who have something to contribute, and who can spare the time that it is necessary to devote to the other place.
In his persuasive opening address to the Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire offered some examples of the way in which hereditary peers make their contribution in the other place. He mentioned the work of its Select Committees, which are taken extremely seriously outside this place. Indeed, I venture to suggest that, in general, the other place is taken more seriously than this place. It is interesting that when one listens to "Today in Parliament" on what I used to call the Home Service—I am a Conservative—

Mr. Mackinlay: On a crystal set?

Hon. Members: On the wireless.

Mr. Howarth: Indeed, on the wireless. One listens to some of the most articulate speakers and wonders, "Who was that? Which Prime Minister appointed him or her?" Then one hears that that was not an appointee, but a young hereditary peer. That is the one thing that the hereditaries have, which the life peers do not: there are a number of young hereditary peers who, I suggest, make an important contribution.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire mentioned Lord Freyberg. I have met him, and I believe that my hon. Friend is absolutely right—Lord Freyberg has made an important contribution, and war widows have him

to thank for the interest that he took and the ability that he discharged to ensure that the relevant measure was brought to fruition by the previous Conservative Government.

Mr. Mackinlay: rose—

The Minister of State, Lord Chancellor's Department (Mr. Geoffrey Hoon): Oh, Andrew!

Mr. Mackinlay: My right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench might not like it, but I remind them that this is the Committee stage, and we Back Benchers will make our contributions, whether they like it or not.
The hon. Gentleman was referring to the benefits attached to the hereditary peerage, and folk coming in at 22 years of age and making a valuable contribution. During the Maastricht debate, the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) said, and I do not believe that he said it disrespectfully, that the problem was down there in the House of Lords—if the lights were switched off, half of them would die.
That is a difficult and unpalatable truth to accept, but the fact is that, under both hereditary and life peerages, peers go on and on and on. Some peers who were appointed or who received their peerage through the hereditary principle were capable and had all their faculties, but there is no end to their period of service. It is not fair to them, it is an abuse of Parliament, and it needs to be stated, painful though it is, that some of the peers should not now be in Parliament.
Under the democratic principle, of course, it is for the electorate to decide. There is no way of bringing an end to parliamentary service in the other place.

Mr. Swayne: Death.

Mr. Mackinlay: That is inappropriate and it is not fair to those Members—

The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr. Michael J. Martin): Order. It is not fair that the hon. Gentleman should go on for so long during an intervention.

Mr. Howarth: It is entirely fair that the hon. Gentleman should have his say and not be gagged by those on the Government Front Bench. It is significant that only two Labour Members have spoken on the Government's flagship measure and that only a few Labour Members have intervened. That says much about the Government's belief in democracy and the democratic process. I listened to the hon. Gentleman and I thought that he had an important point to make.
Some of the elderly Members in their lordships' House make some rather interesting contributions, even if they are ones with which I disagree. Lord Longford comes to mind. He is a great character and he should not be prevented from contributing to our national life, even though I do not agree with everything that he says.

Mr. Linton: rose—

The First Deputy Chairman: Order. We are dealing with amendments that, by their very nature, are confined. We must confine ourselves to hereditary peers.

Mr. Howarth: As far as I am aware, Mr. Martin, Lord Longford is an hereditary peer.

The First Deputy Chairman: If the hon. Gentleman has not caught on to what I am saying, I am pointing out that other parts of his speech did not relate to the amendment.

Mr. Howarth: I give way to the hon. Member for Battersea.

Mr. Linton: I intervene in a genuine spirit of inquiry. We understand why the hon. Gentleman believes that life peers may have qualifications, whether we think that they are good ones or bad ones. However, does the hon. Gentleman believe that hereditary peers have a valuable role to play because any group of 759 people is bound to throw up a proportion with ability, or does he believe that there is something inherent in the hereditary peerage which entitles such people to sit in the other place? In one instance, there is the great-great-great-great grandson of an 18th century turkey merchant. Does that entitle such people to sit in our legislature or give them special abilities?

Mr. Howarth: The hon. Gentleman has had much fun during these proceedings making jokes about the origins of some of those who sit in the House of Lords. However, this is a serious matter. We should support the amendment because the hereditaries bring something special. I shall illustrate that with one example. The other day—perhaps I should not mention his name because I did not say that I would be referring to him—I was speaking to an hereditary peer. He told me that he had spent 40 years of his life earning a living and trying to keep his hereditary estate going. He had always said that on reaching the age of 60 or 65, he would devote his time to taking his constitutional place in the upper House.
The hon. Member for Battersea should not belittle the attitude of mind that is displayed by some of those who take extremely seriously their responsibilities as hereditary peers in the governance and affairs of our country. There is something to be gained in having people who, from the first days of their life, have been brought up with the concept that, at some time, they will have to make a contribution to public life. That is precisely what the sovereign does in bringing up his or her children and that is what hereditary peers do when they bring up their children.
I advance the case for the continuation of hereditary peers to sit and speak in the other place because I believe that they have something to offer. Labour Members have offered nothing to put in their place. They have not tabled any amendments to the Bill. They have suggested that, if the other place behaves well—

Mr. Mackinlay: The hon. Gentleman is wrong, is he not?

The First Deputy Chairman: Order. We need worry only about the amendment that is before us. The hon.

Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth) is talking about the rights of hereditary peers, and about whether Opposition or Government Members have tabled other amendments. That topic is nothing to do with the amendment before us.

Mr. Howarth: I am trying to support the amendment, which is to the effect that the hereditaries should continue to sit and have the right to speak in the other place. I have been advancing that cause, and explaining why they bring something unique to the quality of our national life and to debates in the other House. I believe that the amendment is absolutely right and proper.

Mr. Nick Hawkins: I have been listening carefully to my hon. Friend. Does he agree that it is absolutely clear that many hereditary peers have shown, by their many years of service in the other place, a belief in the tradition of public service, which used to be described as noblesse oblige? That is something that is valuable in our public life and many citizens have come to be grateful for it. Many causes dear to Labour Members have been taken up initially by Members of the other place.

Mr. Howarth: Indeed. I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. I was attempting to demonstrate that those in the other place approach the assumption of their titles in a way that is hard for us as ordinary citizens to understand.

Mr. Roger Gale: I ask my hon. Friend to place on record the appreciation that is felt by many Members of this place of Baroness Wharton. There are Labour Members who are staunch supporters of the all-party animal welfare group. They know that as deputy chairman of that group, Baroness Wharton—Ziki Wharton—has put in an enormous amount of work although she is a working lady who has to earn her own living. I ask my hon. Friend to ask Labour Members why they propose to bar somebody like that from taking a seat in the other place and making a contribution that in other walks of life they would support.

Mr. Howarth: My hon. Friend is absolutely right about Baroness Wharton. She has undertaken sterling work in the other place. One reason why she is able to do that is that she is not answerable to a constituency. She is a Cross Bencher and she is independent; she is also independent minded. Hereditary peers, in not having constituencies, do not feel constrained to pursue a line that might be in the interests of their constituency, but not necessarily in the interests of the country. Hereditary peers are able to take a broader view in the national interest.

Angela Smith: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Howarth: As soon as I have finished my point I shall, of course, give way to the hon. Lady. I am sorry, but she will have to listen to me for just a little longer.
Hereditary peers do not have constituency correspondence. That is a huge advantage. It means that they are not burdened with that aspect of parliamentary life. They are able to devote themselves to whatever


cause, like the baroness to whom my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, North (Mr. Gale) referred. They can take up the issues that they feel are important.

Angela Smith: Are we to take it that these interesting encomiums of individual Members of the House of Lords indicate that other Members of that place are not held in equally high regard by Conservative Members, or is the debate to be punctuated by our going through the entire 759 Members one by one and recording their individual worth?

Mr. Howarth: The debate could be punctuated by their contributions. That would make for an extremely interesting debate, but I know that you, Mr. Martin, would not particularly approve of that. You might find that that caused the debate to stray.

Mr. Swayne: The hon. Member for Basildon (Ms Smith) can table an amendment.

Mr. Howarth: As my hon. Friend says from a sedentary position, the hon. Lady is perfectly free to table an amendment to that effect. We look forward to seeing it on the amendment paper tomorrow.
The hon. Member for Thurrock (Mr. Mackinlay) or the hon. Member for Battersea asked what was the difference between hereditary peers and a lottery. If someone comes from the think tank Demos, the answer is not a lot. Demos has proposed that, instead of hereditary peers, we should have a lottery in which ordinary people are picked at random. The remarks of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe were not so wide of the truth. It appears that a lottery is proposed to choose who sits in the Lords.

The First Deputy Chairman: Order. Perhaps I can help the hon. Gentleman again. He is wide of the amendment.

Mr. Howarth: I was making the point that, to a certain extent, the hereditaries are something of a lottery and, therefore, we do not need an alternative proposal.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe said that, if the amendment were passed and hereditaries were able to sit and speak in the other place, there would be no threat to the House of Lords from that. I disagree with him. If the Government were to support the amendment, they would find that the hereditaries who participated, albeit not in a voting fashion, would have something to contribute and would expose the flawed nature of the Government's proposal. Therefore, it is unlikely that the Government will accept the amendment, but they are exposing the flaw in the Bill by opposing it. They are also exposing the spite and animosity that they feel towards people who have, as many of my hon. Friends have pointed out, made a constructive and public-spirited contribution to our national life. I shall support the amendment.

Mr. Benn: I had not intended to speak, but I want to put on record the fact that the debate, and the speeches made by Conservative Members, ought to be made compulsory reading for every schoolchild in this country.
Those arguments have appeared time and again. I read the debate on Second Reading of the Reform Bill; it was warned that parliamentary democracy would disappear if the franchise were extended. I point out to the right hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Mr. Maclennan), who is the leader or deputy leader or former leader—whatever he is—of the Liberal Democrats, that Mr. Asquith said that parliamentary democracy would be undermined if women got the vote. Today, we have had a complete rerun of the whole history of the argument for making this place democratic. Now, Conservative Members are trying to prevent that in the Lords.
The other aspect of the debate that has interested me very much is the total ignorance of Conservative Members of the real flexibility of the so-called hereditary system. As I said a couple of weeks ago, when the peers were first appointed, they were not hereditary at all. The Salisburys have had a wonderful way of using writs of acceleration: "Get there before you have inherited." I had a very amusing correspondence with Lord Salisbury—"Bobbity", as he was called�žwho wrote me an angry letter about what I was doing. I replied, "Dear Lord Salisbury, I only want a writ of deceleration." The Salisburys could do what they liked.
Someone talked about noblesse oblige; my problem was noblesse obligatoire, which was a slightly different complaint. I have no objection to hereditary peers at all; they are ordinary people, but they happen to be law makers, without any entitlement to be so. On the other question about a hereditary system, I wonder how many Conservative Members know that, in the old days, treason was hereditary for those convicted of it. The corruption of the blood went from generation to generation. I do not know whether Conservative Members are in favour of hereditary traitors, but they existed for a long time, until that was changed.
I share one view with Conservative Members. I am very disappointed that my colleagues have not come up with a simple alternative, which is to elect a second Chamber. Most civilised countries in the world do that. I do not know what would happen if new Labour got its hands on the Senate—heaven knows how the Senate would be appointed in the United States—so I agree with Conservative Members who complain about our opposition to that idea, but please do not try to persuade me that the Lords are the final safeguard against extending Parliament.
I remember when the Lords voted to extend the Parliament. There should have been an election in 1940, but a Tory House of Lords extended the Parliament to 1945. Why? Because everybody said, "We don't want an election in the middle of a war." If we really believe that the final safeguard of democracy in Britain is hereditary peers then, my God, democracy is not very safe. The hereditary peers are not based on democracy, they do not believe in democracy and they do not practise democracy, but we are told by the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Sir N. Lyell), a former Attorney-General, that they are our final safeguard against democracy disappearing.
The Committee would be well advised to settle this matter by a vote. We could then discuss the next group of amendments, which is much more interesting. We will be told to vote against Lord Weatherill's amendment, but, when it comes back from the Lords, we will be told to vote for it. We are going through the hoop in a way that


no parliamentary party of which I have been a member has ever had to. Let us get on to that amendment, but, please, preserve the debate. It is a supreme example of the Conservative party at its best, and nobody has reflected that better than the hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth).

Sir Nicholas Lyell: It is a real pleasure to speak after the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) who has been kind enough to mention me. I recall that, when the great Reform Bill went through in 1832, the Duke of Wellington held back his troops in the House of Lords and prevented them from voting against it. In consequence, it went through. There is another story—about one very fat peer being counted as 10, which also helped to carry the Bill through—but that would prove the right hon. Gentleman's version of democracy too well.
The point about the debate is that it does not concern the question whether the House of Lords should be reformed. Our great complaint, which I share with the right hon. Gentleman, and the country's great complaint against the Labour party, who have had 18 years to think about this, is that the Government have come forward with a proposition that will destroy what we have at present without telling us what they will put in its place. That will hang round the Government's neck at every stage of the consideration of the Bill, but that is not what we are debating.
We are debating what will be put in place at the interim stage. I share the reflective cynicism of some hon. Members. I hope that the interim stage will be extremely brief, that the Leader of the House will be as good as her word and that proposals will be introduced by 2000 so that we can get on with proper reform. However, I have no great confidence in that and we must consider carefully what we shall put in place in the interim.
I have said not that the House of Lords is in itself the foundation of democracy, but that it is our constitutional anchor. It gives the opportunity for the House of Commons to think again. It can hold up proceedings for long enough to force us to think once again about whether a proposal is what we want and what the country wants. That gives the country an opportunity to focus on what is the issue. The House of Lords can develop the argument, sort out the details and generally broaden the public debate. It is essential that that can continue during the interim period.
I support the amendment faute de mieux, although there is mieux available. The next group of amendments contains my own suggestions for what to do in the interim, but the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack) is valuable in that it would enable the upper House to continue to contribute. Hereditary peers who contribute in practice would be able to continue to contribute their voices—and, thus, their wisdom—to debate and to influence the peers who will, after all, be almost entirely appointed and left as the substantial rump.
Once one gets into the question of legitimacy, the exact legitimacy of an appointed placeman, as opposed to that of the son of a hereditary placeman, is difficult to identify. I share the view of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) that at least a significant proportion of the upper House—I do not go so far as to say the whole of it—should be elected. I also

share the view of the hon. Member for Thurrock (Mr. Mackinlay), who provides an example of independence in a sea of conformity, that, in so far as it is elected, the upper House should be elected on a rolling basis. That would provide the constitutional anchor and the stability.
We are deciding whether Members of the House of Lords who, by definition, play an active part because they speak in debates, should be able to continue to speak. I have done a little research, with the assistance of the Library, to find out how often such people speak. We are considering all this in the context of the figure of 91 hereditary peers which has been suggested by the Government, although they will not allow us to push that figure upwards because they fear that they may be defeated in the upper House.
The Library has produced, from the parliamentary on-line information service, a record of how many peers have spoken more than 40 times since 1992–93—my amendment No. 18 suggests that we should go back through speaking records for 10 years—which shows that, in that time, about 90 peers spoke about 40 times. We lose out—this is one of my reasons for thinking that going for a figure of 91 is a bit too trite and much too limited—because some enormously significant contributions have been made by peers who have spoken a good deal less often.
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I know that it is invidious to mention names, but I have tried to select Cross-Bench peers who are known for particular interests. Lord Selborne, who chaired the royal commission on the environment, and who everybody agrees played an enormously constructive role in the upper House over those years, spoke 32 times. Lord Alexander of Weedon, who is a great banker and was a great lawyer, spoke 28 times. The Labour peer, Lord Wedderburn, a great trade union lawyer and a considerable constitutionalist, spoke 28 times. Lord Runciman, who chaired the royal commission on criminal justice, is an outstanding academic and has played an active role in the House, spoke 12 times. I could take the list on. Lord Gowrie, who used to play a great part in Government and is well recognised as a leader in the arts, spoke six times during that period. All those contributions were valuable.
We are discussing an interim, which the Government—I accept in good faith, although they may not achieve it—say will be relatively short. We need to keep the spirit of the House's diversity alive while we decide what to put in its place.

Mr. Hawkins: Does my right hon. and learned Friend support the concept that those hereditary peers who have played a part in the work of the other place over many years, whether they have spoken often or only on a few occasions, should be given a continuing role? That is what I suggested on Second Reading. My right hon. and learned Friend might be interested to know that I have discussed the matter with a number of newly selected Labour Members. Whatever they may say publicly in the Chamber, informally many of them agree that those who have done the work in the other place should be allowed a continuing role and that the number of those allowed to remain should not be restricted to 91.

Sir Nicholas Lyell: Yes, I agree with my hon. Friend. At the risk of immodesty, my amendments Nos. 16, 17 and 18, which are in the next group, propose precisely that. It would be out of order to discuss them now.
As I said, faute de mieux and, because it has genuine merit, I support the amendment proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire. It provides an opportunity for those who are active in the House of Lords to continue to play a real role in the interim without threatening the Government' s proposals. The Government's argument that they might be voted down by the trooping out of backwoodsmen might have some force—they grossly overstate the case, as they grossly overstate much of their case—but they cannot oppose the amendment on that ground.

Mr. Benn: Has the right hon. and learned Gentleman given any consideration to bishops? When a bishop ceases to have a diocese, he is booted out of the House of Lords. He may be a very wise and experienced bishop. He is allowed to use the Dining Room, but he is not allowed to sit in the House. What makes hereditary peers better than retired bishops? The first Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang, who did retire, was made a peer because the Government suddenly realised that, as a retired archbishop, he could do nothing, so they gave him a barony.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman must study what he is talking about. He is speaking as if hereditary peers were better than bishops, but there is no logic in that. I find it fascinating and I shall promote the Hansard of this debate even more actively among my constituents, but it would be helpful if he knew a bit more about the Chamber that he speaks about so fully.

Sir Nicholas Lyell: The right hon. Gentleman, whom I greatly respect and for whom the House has great affection, is obviously intoxicated by his own vision of logic. In commending the example of bishops, he commends corporatism: the bishops represent the Church and the Law Lords represent the law. There is a genuine argument, which the Government are rightly considering, for setting up a partly corporatist upper House. If one is partly corporatist and one is booted out after a time, one disappears. I thought that the right hon. Gentleman was opposed to that, but I now see that he has a sneaking affection for it. He has also noted that archbishops—of York as well as of Canterbury—have been appointed life peers at the end of their term.
Let me return to my theme. The merit of the amendment is that it allows us to continue to benefit from the wisdom of Members of the upper House without threatening the Government. The threat to the Government from the upper House has always been grossly overplayed. What we need from an upper House is people of calibre, diversity and independence. That, above all, is what we need for our constitutional anchor while we consider carefully what to put in the place of the existing House.
I do not support the House of Lords' continuance provided that we can put something better in its place. The artificial attempts of the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) and others to suggest that all Conservative Members are wedded to the principle of hereditary peerage is not just simplistic but self-deluding,

because that is an easy windmill at which to tilt. That is what the Government, with all their spin doctors behind them, like to pretend is the view of Conservative Members.
I was proposing constructive reform of the upper House within a year of being elected to this House because I did not want the kind of reform, flooded with nominated peers, that was then being proposed by the right hon. Member for Chesterfield.

The First Deputy Chairman: Order. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is going wide of the amendment.

Sir Nicholas Lyell: Yes, Mr. Martin, I was going wide. I accept that.
None the less, we must look at the interim. We do not seek to uphold the hereditary peerage in the last ditch; we want a constitutional anchor in the interim, and the amendment provides one constructive way in which we might get it.

Mr. Swayne: It is a pity that the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) is no longer in his place, for he appeared to be taking up the role of inquisitor-general that was played by the hon. Member for Corby (Mr. Hope) on Second Reading in asking each Conservative Member if he or she were in favour of the hereditary principle and whether he or she maintained that support for it despite its abandonment by Conservative Front-Bench Members.
For the benefit of Labour Members, may I say that I share the affection of my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth) for the hereditary principle. However, it ignores one salient fact that, on 1 May 1997, the Labour party, which had explicitly put in its manifesto a commitment to abolish the voting rights of hereditary peers, won that election. Those of us with an affection for the hereditary principle therefore moved on, having lost that battle.

Mr. Gerald Howarth: How many electors does my hon. Friend think voted Labour specifically because of that manifesto pledge?

Mr. Swayne: I have not the remotest idea. However, it does not strike me as a matter of significance because the Labour party has a majority; it has introduced a Bill and can pursue that Bill in accordance with its manifesto. An academic discussion about who voted for what would be profitless.
The amendment is entirely consistent with the principle of the Bill—to abolish the voting rights of hereditary peers—but deals with the consequent practical difficulties that arise from giving effect to that manifesto pledge. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack) said in moving the amendment, the main practical difficulty is that more than half the present occupants of the House of Lords will be dispensed with. That creates an enormous hole in terms of expertise on both procedure and particular issues.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire mentioned to hereditary peers who have specialised in certain subjects and been of great public service in using their expertise to draw attention to those. Those peers would be unlikely to find themselves saved by


amendments that may or may not be passed during the passage of this Bill. Amendment No. 1 is intended to deal with the loss of that expertise.
Having read the amendment, I still cannot muster any great enthusiasm for the proposed arrangement. My misgivings are not addressed by the fact that it is a transitory arrangement, which will fulfil a need during the hopefully short period that will be required before more fundamental reforms make the amendment—and, indeed, the entire settlement proposed in the Bill—unnecessary.
My right hon.and learned Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Sir N. Lyell) was perhaps more charitable than me in saying that, if it took rather longer for final reform to come about, that might not be because of the Government's intention. I regard the amendment as a powerful incentive to the effecting of speedy reform. It has become clear in the debate that Labour Members have a passionate desire for the hereditary principle, in every form, to be dispensed with; let us therefore pass an amendment such as this, which will give them every incentive to maintain pressure on the Executive, and on Ministers in particular, to dispense with it. Unlike my right hon. and learned Friend, I suspect that the Government have every intention of letting the Bill remain as it is for ever, if necessary. It is therefore entirely appropriate for us to insert arrangements to ensure that the transitional period remains a transitional period.
The Government say that the matter is urgent, but that is belied by the fact that they did not establish a royal commission 20 months ago so that we could examine its findings now. Let amendment No. 1 supply the urgency.

Mr. Wells: As you will expect, Mr. Martin, I am anxious to stay in order so that you will not have to make a ruling. I want to ensure that you agree that we are discussing an amendment that will permit hereditary peers to sit in the House of Lords until such time as the temporary Chamber is abolished and a new Chamber is introduced. I trust that discussion of the way in which the Chamber will work will be in order, as will discussion of why it is necessary for hereditary peers to remain there to participate in debates. Those are important issues.
I risk inclusion in the distribution of Hansard in the constituency of the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn), and being caricatured in the way of which only the right hon. Gentleman is capable. That is indeed a serious disincentive. I shall, however, talk about the way in which the House of Lords operates at present. Hon. Members have made speeches illustrating the fact that hereditary peers bring much quality and experience to their task, not least because many come from old families with a long tradition of public service.

Mr. Hawkins: Noblesse oblige.

Mr. Wells: I must ask my hon. Friend about the difference between noblesse oblige and droit de seigneur: I understand that there is a difference. In any event, hereditary peers have given long service to the House of Lords, as have their parents before them, and that service is still important. I suggest that their background is irrelevant. It does not matter whether they are descended from the lady who serviced Charles II in St. James's park, or come from whatever other background the Labour party would like to sling at them; and it does not matter

whether what the Labour party says is true. What is important is their contribution to the House of Lords today, and there is no doubt that the quality and credibility of the House of Lords depend largely on the hereditary element.

Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Wells: I should love to.

Mrs. Dunwoody: I am listening carefully to the case that the hon. Gentleman is making. Is he aware that the bulk of the work in the other place is done almost exclusively by those who accept no party Whip, that most are created peers, and that the Cross-Bench group is represented in 90 per cent. of votes as being always present and always ready to discuss matters of state?

Mr. Wells: There is a great deal in what the hon. Lady says. I believe that the Cross Benchers fora: the largest single group in the House of Lords—they cannot be called a party—and add enormously to what goes on there. They include life peers, but also many hereditary peers—200, I believe—who participate in the elements of House of Lords activity that the hon. Lady admires. I want to talk about the life peers' contribution as well, but I know that you, will call me to order Mr. Martin, if I start talking about life peers. At present, I must concentrate on the 200 hereditary peers on the Cross Benches.
Together with their life peer friends, those hereditary peers make a major contribution—in Select Committees and on the Floor of the House—to the objectivity and, indeed, the quality of debates for which the House of Lords is much respected, as many of my hon. Friends have pointed out. I pay tribute to the selfless work of many peers.
The amendment seeks to preserve that in the interim House. We want to continue the traditions that have been established; we want the House of Lords to retain its credibility, and to continue its good work in checking what is done in the House of Commons and asking it to consider again when necessary. I especially appreciate the work of the House of Lords on European affairs.

Dr. Liam Fox: Does my hon. Friend agree that it is a matter not of academic purity—as Labour Members have suggested—but of pure common sense that, in an interim House, it would benefit the Government as a whole to retain the maximum experience?

Mr. Wells: Indeed. That is why I support the amendment. We are talking about quality, respect and credibility, and about the ability of the House of Lords to constitute a second Chamber of some merit. If the temporary Chamber is not of some merit, it will fall into disrepute, will soon be thought useless, and will therefore disappear. The last temporary arrangements for the House of Lords have lasted for 88 years: until today. There must be a danger that the temporary Chamber will become permanent, and that is one of many reasons for the amendment. The Government want a House of Lords that will be credible, will be able to handle the business and will be a check on the House of Commons, and that is why even they are beginning to support it.
The Government do not truly want a House of Lords that is elected and permanent, because of the timetable. Hon. Members know as well as I do that a royal commission that is given only nine months will do a very superficial job. If it has done a superficial job, how long will it take for a Joint Committee of both Houses to consider a badly drafted and ill-considered report—as this report is almost certain to be, after only nine months?

The First Deputy Chairman: Order. The hon. Gentleman is straying wide of the amendments. I know that he is always keen to keep within the scope of the amendments. I rise to try to assist him.

Mr. Wells: I was hoping that, during my remarks, you would not feel impelled, Mr. Martin, to rebuke me for not keeping the debate closely related to the amendment. If I may demonstrate, it is important to consider what the temporary Chamber with the hereditary peers in it is likely to be like and how long it is likely to last.

The First Deputy Chairman: Order. The hon. Gentleman does not need to worry about the temporary Chamber. He needs to worry only about the amendment before us, which gives certain rights to hereditary peers. Other amendments may cover the points that he is trying to make. Obviously, when they come before us, he will be able to catch my eye.

Mr. Wells: If I am not mistaken, the amendment talks about including Members of the House of Lords without the capacity to vote, but with the capacity to speak in the Chamber that the Bill sets up. Therefore, we need to talk about the totality of its make-up and whether it will work as a temporary Chamber, for however long "temporary" may be. It has been undefined in the Bill. It remains undefined by the Government. Therefore, we have to consider seriously how long the temporary Chamber with the hereditary peers—which is what I support: the hereditary element in that temporary Chamber—will last and the quality of that Chamber as a result of the hereditary peers being able to speak.
I strongly support the amendment, as I strongly support the next amendment—I will make other points on that, which I hope you, will find to be in order Mr. Martin—because I believe strongly that we need hereditary peers in the Chamber for the time being. The reason for that is that those are the people who give credibility to the House of Lords and provide quality in its work. I have paid great tribute to many of those who work in that way. I want to see them in the interim Chamber.
If the amendment fails, and I assume that we will be in order if we consider what will happen if the amendment fails, we shall have a House without hereditary peers being able to sit and to speak in the House of Lords. Therefore, we will have a Chamber—as the Bill proposes, before it is amended—simply with life peers. Life peers are appointed by Crown privilege—by the prerogative of the Prime Minister. They often have party allegiances, although some have gone to the Cross Benches, as the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) has said. However, would they be bound by the Salisbury convention?
As I understand it, the convention says that, when legislation reaches the House of Lords from the House of Commons, it must be passed to let the Government have their way. We may have a House of Lords without the hereditary peers being there to speak. Hereditary peers would probably honour the Salisbury convention, but life peers will not do so.
The Government have said that they will appoint at least 55 additional life peers. That will give the Labour party a quality of representation: there will be a balance between Conservative life peers and life peers who have adherence to the Labour party.

The First Deputy Chairman: Order. Perhaps I can again assist the hon. Gentleman. He is talking about the structure of the other place. We are considering voting and speaking rights for hereditary peers, so he should stick to the narrow confines of the amendment that is before us.

Mr. Wells: I am sure that you would agree, Mr. Martin, that the Salisbury convention was so named because it was proposed and advocated by a hereditary peer.

The First Deputy Chairman: Order. Perhaps there is another occasion when the hon. Gentleman can talk about the Salisbury convention, but he should not do so in the debate on the amendments that are before us. They are too narrow for that.

Mr. Wells: Let me bring myself directly to order. We want hereditary Members of the House of Lords to remain to speak—not to vote, but to speak; that is what the amendment is about. It is that body of peers, the hereditary peers, that will respect the Salisbury convention. I will leave the matter by making the following point if you do not wish me to go on and develop that point still further, Mr. Martin; I understand your need to keep the debate under strict control and I respect that fully: it is the hereditary peers who will respect the Salisbury convention. That is why we need them. Life peers are not likely to do so. I will leave that point to other debates.

Mr. Tyrie: One aspect of the relationship between the clause and the Salisbury convention is that the convention is intended to apply mainly to non-obstruction of Government business that has been in a manifesto: legislation should not be voted down on Second Reading. However, another possibility is that the convention might need to apply to those people who might consider filibustering against Government business. If we passed the clause, might we not have to consider the possibility that peers who are brought in who have the right to speak, but not vote, may yet play a constitutional role by filibustering?

Mr. Wells: Filibustering is a time-honoured convention of this House. I know that those who fill the Chair do not agree with that time-honoured convention and seek to prevent any such thing from taking place, but it is a useful democratic tool in a debating Chamber such as this—an elected one—as it is in the House of Lords. Therefore, hereditary peers would assist the process of delay. As you will know, Mr. Martin, because of the number of years that you sat on the Back Benches, that is practically the only weapon that is available to the Opposition to bring


the Government to their senses and to make them listen to some views that they would rather not hear. I know that you are very determined to make certain that all Back Benchers get that opportunity, which I use at the present time.
One of the serious issues is the way in which the Government will use the House of Lords without the hereditary peers in it. Clearly, it will be a major extension of Executive power if the Government totally control the way in which the House of Lords votes. That is what will happen in the House of Lords if it is totally appointed and does not have the element of hereditary peers, even if they do not have votes.
We will talk about hereditary peers with votes in the debate on the next amendment—which I have a lot to say about as well—but here we are looking at a House of Lords with 55 extra Labour Members, who will be able to pass anything that the Prime Minister wishes to have passed. There will be no delaying powers, however long the filibuster. That is why we need the hereditary peers in the interim Chamber. Otherwise, we put the House of Lords in limbo—a limbo position whereby it will be simply the poodle of the elected Government.

Mrs. Dunwoody: The hon. Gentleman seems to be suggesting that the "limbo" position is horizontal.

Mr. Wells: I know that the hon. Lady has visited the Caribbean. She is of course right to say that, in the Caribbean, limbo dancing is done horizontally, under a flaming bar, to calypso music of the type that is performed so brilliantly in Trinidad and Tobago during carnival, which starts today and leads up to Lent. However, I believe that you would quickly pull me up to order if I followed that thought, Mr. Martin.
Limbo—lying down—is exactly what the elected Government want the other place to do. I believe that we need the hereditary peers to prevent such a Chamber being created.
We have also to question the Government about the peculiar position into which they have got themselves. Although they oppose amendment No. 1, they will support an amendment tabled subsequently in the other place proposing to retain hereditary peers with powers.

The First Deputy Chairman: Order. The hon. Gentleman knows that he must not speak to subsequent amendments. We must dispose of this group of amendments before dealing with the next one. There is no point in mentioning subsequent amendments now. He will be able to speak to them when we reach them.

Mr. Wells: I should be very interested to know what your Clerk would advise you, Mr. Martin.

The First Deputy Chairman: Order. No one advises the occupant of the Chair—who has made a decision and given a ruling.

Mr. Wells: I assure you, Mr. Martin, that I have no doubt that you will always make very positive and proper decisions in the interests of all hon. Members.
The Government are in a peculiar position. In a subsequent amendment, they will be supporting hereditary peers with voting rights, whereas, in amendment No. 1, they will not support peers without voting rights. That seems to be illogical.

The First Deputy Chairman: Order. We are considering amendment No. 1 and the amendments grouped with it. We shall consider the next group of amendments when we reach it. Let us speak to this group of amendments before proceeding to the next one.

Mr. Wells: I believe that, if we pass amendment No. 1, we may not have to worry about the next group of amendments. If we pass the amendment, the Clerk may say to you, "The next amendment falls." We could therefore move on even more swiftly—which I know would very much please your heart, Mr. Martin, and the hearts of the Government Whips.

Sir Patrick Cormack: Perhaps I might help my hon. Friend by saying that, if the Government had the good sense to accept amendment No. 1, we might well decide not to move the next group of amendments.

Mr. Wells: That might be a very sensible course of action. If we passed the amendment, we would have a new House of Lords in which we retained all the peers and would not have to choose from among them. They would not have to elect from among themselves, and we would not have to have the peculiarly distorted electoral process described in the next group of amendments, which we shall debate at length.
If we passed amendment No. 1, we would create a House of Lords that is credible and contains all the talents. I should say that I wonder why the hereditary peers give so much time to the work of the House of Lords. They deserve our respect and great gratitude for doing the very hard that work they do.
If we passed amendment No. 1—even if the new second Chamber were temporary for much longer than any of us suspect that it will be—we would have a second Chamber of which the United Kingdom could be proud and that would fulfil a very useful function in our overall parliamentary process.
I therefore commend amendment No. 1 to the Committee.
I am grateful to you, Mr. Martin, for your forbearance in allowing me to try to apply some pertinent points in the argument that we should have hereditary peers—unable to vote, but sitting in the other place.

Mr. Tyrie: I shall be brief. [HON. MEMBERS: "Shame."] I can only assume that that is a reference to one or two other occasions—which hon. Members liked—when I spoke in the House.
The amendment expresses not a new idea but an idea that has been around for a very long time. It was first expressed as a serious proposal, in draft legislative form, by a Labour Government, in 1968. Richard Crossman proposed it. Labour quite happily signed up to the idea then—and it did so after a process of all-party consultation. If there is one salient and appalling aspect of the way in which the current Government have gone about their business in introducing the Bill, it is that there has been no all-party consultation.
On all previous occasions when fundamental reform of the House of Lords has been proposed by a Government—in 1910, 1948 and 1968—there has been prior all-party consultation. There has not been such consultation this time—not a scrap of it; nothing at all. The Government have simply introduced the Bill and told us to vote for it. Today, we have the opportunity at least for a little debate and to point out that Labour itself once supported—even introduced—the proposals made in the group of amendments before us.
After all-party consultation, the proposals were agreed by Conservative Members. Lord Carrington agreed to them. Consequently, they might easily have found their way on to the statute book. Having said all that, however, I cannot say that I am terribly attracted to the idea.

Mr. Wells: I wonder whether my hon. Friend will reflect on the reasons why that Bill was not passed? It was, after all, Mr. Foot and Enoch Powell who opposed it.

The First Deputy Chairman: Order. The hon. Gentleman should know better. We are going far too wide of the matters dealt with in amendment No. 1.

Mr. Tyrie: One of the reasons why it was not passed—

The First Deputy Chairman: Order. I have made the point. The hon. Gentleman should speak to the amendment. The history of previous Bills is nothing to do with what we are considering now.

Mr. Tyrie: If you will be forbearing for just a moment, Mr. Martin, I promise you that—probably even by the end of the sentence that I was beginning—I shall be able to show that I am speaking exclusively to the amendment.
One of the main reasons why the earlier Bill was not passed is that the proposals in it were very complicated and would have been difficult to administer. A crucial and difficult aspect of the administration of that Bill was the decision to have people sitting alongside one another some of whom would have been able to vote and some of whom would not.

Sir Patrick Cormack: Does my hon. Friend accept that there is a significant difference between this Bill and the earlier Bill—which was to be a once-and-for-all reform? The situation created by the earlier Bill would have persisted for many years, whereas our proposals deal only with an interim stage.

Mr. Tyrie: My hon. Friend anticipates remarks that I shall make in a few moments. Be not afeard! Tonight, I shall not be a rebel: I shall be back on-side by the time the Division bell goes.
In 1956, a study of the idea was made by an official working party, including Clerks of the House, which has become available under the 30-year rule. On the proposal that is dealt with in amendment No. 1, which was supported by the Labour party in 1968, the report concluded:
A second Chamber which contained a large number of peers who were impotent but not speechless would be regarded by many as ludicrous and unrealistic.

The working party also said that such an arrangement would be wholly impractical, making the composition and voting structure of the Committee structure of the House of Lords very complicated and almost impossible to run.
In normal circumstances, such a report would have caused me to want to oppose amendment No. 1. We must look at the amendment in the context of the Bill, and I have never seen a more foolish and stupid Bill. It is not even halfway sensible.

Mr. Greg Pope: The poll tax?

Mr. Tyrie: The hon. Gentleman mentions the poll tax—

The First Deputy Chairman: Order. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the poll tax, and I have told him to be quiet.

Mr. Tyrie: I am doing my best. You will recall, Mr. Martin, that the last time I was called to order, I completed my sentence to arrive absolutely within order in seconds.

Mr. Forth: My hon. Friend has pointed out that the report referred to the impracticality of the proposal in the amendment. Does he agree that there is a certain attractiveness in that? If stage 1 were demonstrated to be impractical, would that not hasten the need to move to stage 2?

Several hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Tyrie: I am reluctant to give way any more because everyone seems to want to make the few points that I have left for me, which is very distressing. I will do my best to make the points in my own way, and then I will sit down quickly.
We are faced with a Bill that will leave the House of Lords not even halfway workable. It will be a joke of a House of Lords—nothing more than a farce. It will be something for which the public will show no respect and which will command no general consent. That is why anyone with any sense should support the amendment, which would at least provide an element of continuity between where we are now and stage 1. It would enable a few people who know what they are doing to carry on articulating their views and demonstrating the independence that is an essential part of a second Chamber.
It is possible that the amendment would have no effect, and that the House of Lords would look just as bad with or without hereditary peers having speaking rights—1 do not know—but I am sure that it would not make it look worse. I am therefore moved to support the amendment. I am particularly aware of the points made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth), because the retention of those peers with speaking, if not voting, rights will increase the pressure on the Government to introduce stage 2 reform. I have always wanted stage 2 reform and believed that we should go straight to it. I have never wanted stage 1. It is essential that we have a second Chamber that works effectively.
It is possible that the proposal will flag up even more saliently the absurdity of the interim House. We have heard tonight that the interim House will be a dog's


breakfast or a pig's ear. No language is too strong to describe the disgraceful constitutional gerrymandering that the Government are embarked on. At best, the amendment assuages a tiny bit the damaging impact of that; at worst. it can do no damage. I therefore commend it to the Committee.

Mr. Grieve: One of the features to emerge from the debate—it came as a surprise to me—was the way in which a number of the Government's supporters suggested that the main thrust of the amendments was in some way to prolong into a future Parliament the role of the hereditary peerage. My support for the amendment comes precisely from the desire to see stage 2 implemented—exactly like my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie).
I said on Second Reading—I stand by it—that I was unwilling to embark on stage 1 without stage 2. Since the Government have freed the logjam and made that decision for me, I want to move rapidly to a stage 2 that will lead to a radical transformation of the relationship between the two Houses and, above all, of the way in which the upper House operates and is selected. I am increasingly coming to the view that the only way in which that can be done—and the only way in which we can be sure that Governments are brought to account and that there is proper public scrutiny of business—is with an elected second Chamber.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Sir N. Lyell) said that he accepted the Government's assurance that they would try to move to the next stage by 2001. In fact, if one looks at the Government's comments on Second Reading as concerning the length of the interim—

The First Deputy Chairman: Order. The hon. Gentleman must concentrate on the amendments, and not on Second Reading or on stage 2. He cannot speak at length on those matters.

Mr. Grieve: I will do my very best, but I hope that some forbearance will be exercised towards the development of arguments on what I think are relevant points—points centring on the amendments—from Members who may come late to the debate but who have sat through everything, as opposed to the latitude that seemed to be allowed to those who participated earlier.
If we allow hereditary peers to remain as participating, but not voting, Members of the interim Chamber, it will provide a powerful mechanism to ensure that the quality that they have contributed in the past—which Labour Members have acknowledged—is maintained. However, they will not be interfering with the basic premise repeated so often on Second Reading—that the fact that they are there by right of heredity is wrong; that the Government have a mandate to bring about change; and that the Government wish to see an upper House that is more balanced in terms of the proportions of the parties.
None of those matters is interfered with in any way by amendment No. 1, which is targeted at continuing participation by hereditary peers in debate, but not in votes. On 1 February, the Under-Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley, North and Sefton, East (Mr. Howarth) said:

The White Paper made it clear that if we can get a consensus and if the commission meets the timetable, we shall make every effort to ensure that the second stage of reform is approved by Parliament by the next general election." — [Official Report, 1 February 1999; Vol. 324, c. 696.]
That is hardly in accordance with the Government saying the year 2001—and, indeed, as a nebulous promise it takes some beating. At the end of that debate, the Minister said that only by consensus could the Government move forward.

The First Deputy Chairman: Order. Once again the hon. Gentleman is going wide of the amendments. I am bound by the rules of the House, and I cannot allow him to do that. It is not good if the Chair keeps intervening, but I must do so if the hon. Gentleman goes wide of the amendments. We cannot have a rerun of the Second Reading debate.

Mr. Grieve: I apologise, but I am referring to the significance of the amendment in terms of the problem pointed to by the Minister of State. There is no consensus. There is no consensus of any kind among Labour Members. What powerful mechanism can therefore be introduced by the amendment to ensure that the Government are shamed into hastening stage 2? I believe that the hereditary peers' continued participation in the upper House will be that powerful mechanism. They will not have a vested interest in voting, but they are the one group with a permanent and vested interest in seeing that the Government honour their commitments on both stage 1 and stage 2 of reform.
I have no faith in the Government's promise; not because I think that the Minister of State tried to deceive the House on Second Reading—or, for that matter, that the Leader of the House has tried to do so—but because of the difficulty of achieving consensus, and therefore of not moving to the second stage.
Amendment No. 23 deals with the question of leaving to the hereditary peers a residual voting right over the extension of the life of the Parliament. The issue goes to the heart of a major flaw in the Bill, to which we shall return on the next group of amendments. No adequate answer was provided by Ministers on Second Reading. I hope that the matter will be fully discussed in Committee. My understanding of a Parliament is that it subsists for a set period. It is started by the issue of a writ of election, followed by the writ of summons to individual peers to attend. We are one body in terms of the constitution and make-up of this House and of the other House. I am the first to accept that we have the power to change that make-up for the future, but I should be interested to know the constitutional basis on which the House can lop off a limb—a part of itself—during the currency of the Parliament.
We shall come back to that on the next group of amendments, because it is critical. I should also like to talk about a European human rights dimension. If we accept the basic premise on amendment No. 23, it becomes even more extraordinary that the hereditary peers should be deprived of their right to vote during the currency of a Parliament to which they have been summoned, and of the chance to debate that Parliament being perpetuated ad infinitum. There is a possibility—albeit a technical one—that that could happen.
I share the view of my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) that it is unlikely that the power would be abused by the life peers or that they would not be capable of opposing a wrongful decision of this House to try to extend its life. However, that does not alter the fact that the hereditary peers were summoned to this Parliament for its life. Technically, this Parliament could continue ad infinitum without a fresh Parliament being summoned. That is a major flaw in the legislation, which could be cured by allowing the hereditary peers the right under the constitution to ensure that this Parliament does not have an infinite existence.

Mr. Michael Fallon: Does not that also strengthen the case for excluding the composition of the future House from the remit of the Parliament Acts? It was not excluded from the Parliament Act 1911 because the Act was supposed to be temporary.

Mr. Grieve: My hon. Friend makes a good point. There might well be compelling arguments for so doing, although I accept that this Parliament has the right to settle and regulate how a future Parliament might be constructed. My objection, which I shall return to in the debate on the next set of amendments, centres on our right to do that during the course of this Parliament, rather than leaving it to a future Parliament after the next election. That is why I suggested on Second Reading that we should have been wise to legislate and then defer the changes until after the next election.
I hope that the Minister will consider my point. I shall raise several times in Committee the constitutional propriety of the way in which we are going about our business. I was promised last time that the Government would give some indication of how they view the matter, but they have not yet done so. On that basis, I am happy to bring to a close my contributions on the amendments.

Mr. Hoon: May I belatedly welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Martin? You have not had the excruciating, or exquisite, pleasure of sitting here throughout this fascinating and ingenious debate. I say "ingenious" because of Conservative Members' efforts to get across their arguments and—dare I say—their previously prepared speeches while staying within narrowly drawn amendments. As ever more Conservative Members turned up to make their contributions, I wondered whether the real ingenuity was taking place somewhere else in the building, with Conservative Whips encouraging their Members to contribute, but perhaps not always telling them the precise nature of the amendments on which they were expected to speak.
I congratulate the hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack) on setting the style of the debate with the ingenuity of his speech. He used all his considerable eloquence to circle round the central question of why, although he accepts that hereditary peers should not vote on legislation—as I understand that he now does—he believes that they should have the right to attend, sit and speak in the legislature simply as a result of the accident of their birth. The same argument that applies to their right to vote must apply to their right to sit.
I know that the hon. Gentleman is a great student of history and literature. While listening to his speech, when he demonstrated his considerable enthusiasm for the

hereditary peers, I was put in mind of the words of Walter Bagehot, with which I am sure the hon. Gentleman is familiar. He wrote that the cure for admiring the House of Lords was to go and look at it. Bagehot was writing in very different times, of course, making observations that are no longer strictly relevant. He was writing in the 19th century, calling for a fundamental reform of the second Chamber.

Mr. Crispin Blunt: There is a distinction between the right to vote and the right to speak. I was not able to take part in the earlier exchanges because I was detained on matters concerning defence and foreign affairs, which are my areas of interest and knowledge. If the amendment is not accepted, we shall throw away all the knowledge and expertise that is sitting in another place before we come forward with plans for stage 2 that tell us what the final nature of the Chamber will be.

Mr. Hoon: We have heard some descriptions of the 1968 proposals. The Government have been taken to task because the Labour party then supported the idea of having two sorts of Member. Unfortunately, the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie), who is no longer present, did not follow that point through. The 1968 proposals failed because the Conservatives withdrew their support on the grounds that they were too complex and would have produced two sorts of peer. That completely answers the hon. Gentleman's point.
The Government will resist the amendments because we stated categorically in the manifesto on which we were elected that the rights of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords would be ended by statute—not just the right to vote, but the rights to sit and vote. We made it abundantly clear in the manifesto, the White Paper and recent debates that hereditary peers should not be allowed to sit or vote in our Parliament solely on the basis of their birth and without any consideration of their personal qualities and achievements.

Mr. Forth: In that case, how can it be that the Government may be conceding the principle of keeping a certain number of hereditary peers in the interim stage? We do not know whether they will, because the issue has not shuttled back and forward yet, but perhaps—

The First Deputy Chairman: Order. That is a matter for the next debate.

Mr. Forth: On the other hand, the Minister is saying that the Government have a manifesto commitment that there can be no hereditaries in the upper House.

The First Deputy Chairman: Order. Perhaps it is time to let the Committee know that interventions should be brief. There should not be any lead-ups to a case. Hon. Members should just put their case.

Mr. Hoon: The Bill is designed to ensure that the House of Lords is a modern, capable and effective second Chamber, fit for a Parliament of the next century. There is no place for hereditary peers in such a Chamber. There is no case for them to be allowed to vote, to speak, to sit or to participate.

Mr. Oliver Letwin: If the Bill is meant to do all those wonderful things, why have a White Paper and a stage 2?

8 pm

Mr. Hoon: Because, as Conservative Members have said, we have failed in the past to deliver any reform of the House of Lords. As several Government Members said on Second Reading, successful reform can be achieved by a series of stages. We have set out the stages and a timetable, and we intend to deliver on our manifesto commitment.

Mr. Nigel Evans: This has been a good debate. Including myself, 20 right hon. and hon. Members have spoken. The Minister quoted Bagehot saying that those who admired the House of Lords need only come to look at it; Conservative Members feel that those who admire parliamentary democracy need only come here to see how badly reforms are needed, not only for the upper Chamber but for the whole Parliament. We need the checks and balances that a properly constituted second Chamber will provide. That is the purpose of the amendments.
We have been told time and again that we are promoting the hereditary principle for the long term or that we want to delay reform and pack the second Chamber with hereditaries. That is not the case. We have already conceded the fact that the second stage House of Lords will have no place for the hereditary principle, but, as yet, we do not know what the second stage will be and we are concentrating on stage 1.
Page 4 of the White Paper breaks with the manifesto commitment to abolish all the hereditary peers. It says that the Government will be minded to accept the Weatherill amendment in another place, so the Government have already conceded that the hereditary principle should be part of the first stage reform. The amendment expands that one step further, suggesting that hereditary peers should have a role in stage 1.

The President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mrs. Margaret Beckett): That is not the point at all.

Mr. Evans: The right hon. Lady may disagree, but page 4 of the White Paper says:
Legislation being introduced in this Parliamentary session will create a transitional House of Lords. If, as has been proposed, an amendment to the legislation is supported to allow a small number of hereditary peers to sit temporarily in the transitional House, the Government is minded to accept this proposal at an appropriate stage.
The Government have conceded the principle and we have expanded it in the amendment to take heed of the fact that there are so many hereditary peers who could make a contribution—by voice, not vote—in the transitional upper Chamber.

Mr. Hoon: The Government are committed to abolishing the remaining hereditary peers and moving quickly to stage 2. Conservative Members have consistently said that they are suspicious about our determination to get on to stage 2. Surely the fact that there will be a residual number of hereditary peers demonstrates how determined we are to get to stage 2 quickly.

Mr. Evans: Some people, more cynical than myself about accepting what the Minister says, might argue that the Government are holding a pistol to the head of the

hereditaries in the upper House to ensure that the legislation passes more smoothly there. The 1911 amendment was a temporary measure, and here we are, 88 years on, considering the same matter.

Mr. Shepherd: I hope that my hon. Friend will be very cautious about the argument that has just been advanced. A White Paper on freedom of information was published well over a year ago, with many promises of a draft Bill, and we are still waiting.

The First Deputy Chairman: Order. We cannot go into freedom of information on these amendments.

Mr. Evans: We all accept that 59 per cent. of the House of Lords is hereditary. The Government's rate of peerage creation has been higher than any since 1958, but I fully accept that they are trying to increase the number of peers representing the governing party in the upper Chamber. They have created 105, including the four Law Lords, since the Prime Minister took office.
Of the peers under 39, only two are there by appointment, so 36 are there by succession. We have always argued that it is good to get youth in Parliament and give young people the opportunity to have their say. That is one argument in favour of succession. [Laughter.] Hon. Members mock, but hereditary peerages are one way in which young people can get a say about the governance of this country. [Laughter.] It is amazing that Labour Members can dispute the fact that 36 of the 38 peers under 39 are there by succession.

Mr. Garnier: Would it not be easier to accept the mockery of Government Back Benchers if they had taken the time and trouble to contribute to the debate? I think I am right in saying that only two Labour Back Benchers have spoken this evening, but they now come in giggling and smirking, as though their giggles and smirks were of some intellectual value.

Mr. Evans: My hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right. We know that the Government are not prepared to accept facts.
The amendment would allow the Government to have the benefit of the current wealth of experience—I hope that Labour Members do not dispute the fact that such experience exists in the upper Chamber—without having to whinge constantly about being voted down. The amendment is designed to retain the voice, not the vote. We seek the quality of peers' minds, not the quantity of their votes.
What are the Government worried about? Successive Prime Ministers have used patronage to put people of experience from the House of Commons into the House of Lords to carry on with their role of scrutinising legislation. David Steel, Margaret Thatcher and other politicians have made that transition and, as other hon. Members have said, not only politicians go to the other place.
We are in favour of a transitional House, but we do not know to this date how long the transitional House will last. The Parliamentary Secretary, Privy Council Office wrote to me on 9 February:
you asked what would happen if the report of the Royal Commission is not to the Government's liking. As you well know, no Government is bound by the conclusions of a Royal Commission.


Our aim in setting up a Royal Commission to consider long-term reform of the House of Lords is to enable the widest possible consultation and debate on such a fundamental issue, with the aim of reaching a consensus with all the interested parties, not just the politicians.
There are no guarantees. We do not know what the royal commission will propose.

Mr. Tipping: If the hon. Gentleman is so keen to find consensus and a solution, when will we see the former Lord Chancellor's proposals? If we want to make haste, we must see the Conservative proposals.

Mr. Evans: The answer, as the hon. Gentleman knows, is soon. If he and his party had been so serious about second-stage reform, they would have set up the royal commission in May 1997, instead of waiting until a couple of weeks ago to announce it. There is more sincerity on this side of the Committee than has been displayed to date by Labour Members.
I shall pick out some of the points that have been made. My hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack) said that 40 per cent. of regular attenders were hereditary peers. That wealth of experience will be denied to the upper Chamber during what we hope will be a relatively short transition period. The hereditary peers' wealth of experience, in their voices but not their votes, would assist with the 2,000 amendments that the House of Lords passes every year. My hon. Friend mentioned the Countess of Mar and the third Baron Freyburg—the former a senior peer and the latter a new peer—as two examples of a number of peers who have been able to make considerable contributions in the upper Chamber.
The hon. Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Hancock), in a short speech, said that he was disappointed by the staging process, but was prepared to accept the fact that there would be two stages. One of the bones of the contention is that he is prepared not to allow hereditary peers to make a contribution to that process.
The hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Linton), in his speech and in an intervention, said that a House of 750 hereditary peers would throw up people of ability. Of course that is the case, and those people of ability should be given the opportunity, at least during the transition period, to contribute to debates. The retention of the voice, but not the vote, of hereditary peers would concentrate the Government's mind in considering the royal commission's proposals and encourage them to make stage 2 proposals to the House as soon as possible.
My hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) talked about the need for checks and balances. They will be needed more than ever because of the ever-growing power of the Executive in Downing street.
The hon. Member for Braintree (Mr. Hurst) mocked the experience and talent that are available in the upper Chamber, which was rather a shame, given the commitment and dedication shown by peers over many years.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) was critical of the amendment, but, as I have tried to point out, there is nothing sinister about wanting to retain the hereditary principle during the transition period. Those peers would be there only to give guidance, advice

and expertise during the transition. We do not know what the next stage will be—it could be a wholly elected Chamber, as we have heard many hon. Members suggest this evening, or partially elected and partially nominated. Some peers leaving the upper Chamber may want to stand for election. We shall find out when we reach stage 2.
My hon. Friend the Member for Teignbridge (Mr. Nicholls) said that the amendment was a practical mechanism to allow the peers' expertise to be retained in the upper Chamber. That is absolutely right. We must remember that the powers of the upper Chamber are totally different from those of a second Chamber. Nobody is saying that we want the upper House to compete with the lower House, but we want to ensure that there are proper checks and balances.
I could carry on for some considerable time; I am delighted that, as I speak, hon. Members are flooding into the Committee in the anticipation and hope that I will do so, but I must bitterly disappoint them. I shall not have the opportunity to consider many of the points made about the amendments. Needless to say, I hope that those hon. Members who have come in late and were unable to listen to the debate, which has been good and wide ranging, will at least consider that we have the opportunity to support the hereditary peers who have served the House of Lords and parliamentary democracy well for many years.
We can give those peers their voice, but not the vote that the Government have said, time and time again, caused them to introduce the Bill. The Government said that there was a need for legislation because they were continually outvoted in the House of Lords and democracy was eaten away by the fact that the Conservatives had a permanent majority there. The amendment would remove that majority, but it would not remove the commonsense voice of those hereditary peers who have served Parliament well for many years.

Question put, That the amendment be made: —

The Committee divided: Ayes 131, Noes 332.

Division No. 67]
[8.15 pm


AYES


Ainsworth, Peter (E Surrey)
Cran, James


Amess, David
Curry, Rt Hon David


Ancram, Rt Hon Michael
Davis, Rt Hon David (Haltemprice)


Arbuthnot, Rt Hon James
Day, Stephen


Atkinson, David (Bour'mth E)
Duncan, Alan


Atkinson, Peter (Hexham)
Evans, Nigel


Baldry, Tony
Faber, David


Bercow, John
Fabricant, Michael


Beresford, Sir Paul
Fallon, Michael


Blunt, Crispin
Forth, Rt Hon Eric


Boswell, Tim
Fowler, Rt Hon Sir Norman


Bottomley, Peter (Worthing W)
Fox, Dr Liam


Brady, Graham
Fraser, Christopher


Brazier, Julian
Gale, Roger


Browning, Mrs Angela
Garnier, Edward


Bruce, Ian (S Dorset)
Gibb, Nick


Burns, Simon
Gill, Christopher


Butterfill, John
Gillan, Mrs Cheryl


Chapman, Sir Sydney
Goodlad, Rt Hon Sir Alastair


(Chipping Barnet)
Gorman, Mrs Teresa


Chope, Christopher
Gray, James


Clappison, James
Green, Damian


Clarke, Rt Hon Kenneth
Greenway, John


(Rushcliffe)
Grieve, Dominic


Clifton-Brown, Geoffrey
Gummer, Rt Hon John


Colvin, Michael
Hammond, Philip


Cormack, Sir Patrick
Hawkins, Nick






Hayes, John
Paice, James


Heald, Oliver
Paterson, Owen


Heathcoat-Amory, Rt Hon David
Prior, David


Hogg, Rt Hon Douglas
Randall, John


Horam, John
Redwood, Rt Hon John


Howard, Rt Hon Michael
Robertson, Laurence (Tewk'b'ry)


Howarth, Gerald (Aldershot)
Rowe, Andrew (Faversham)


Hunter, Andrew
Ruffley, David


Jack, Rt Hon Michael
St Aubyn, Nick


Jenkin, Bernard
Sayeed, Jonathan


Johnson Smith,
Shephard, Rt Hon Mrs Gillian


Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey
Simpson, Keith (Mid-Norfolk)


Key, Robert
Spicer, Sir Michael


King, Rt Hon Tom (Bridgwater)
Spring, Richard


Kirkbride, Miss Julie
Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John


Laing, Mrs Eleanor
Steen, Anthony


Lait, Mrs Jacqui
Streeter, Gary


Lansley, Andrew
Swayne, Desmond


Letwin, Oliver
Syms, Robert


Lewis, Dr Julian (New Forest E)
Taylor, Ian (Esher  Walton)


Lidington, David
Taylor, Sir Teddy


Lilley, Rt Hon Peter
Townend, John


Lloyd, Rt Hon Sir Peter (Fareham)
Trend, Michael


Loughton, Tim
Tyrie, Andrew


Luff, Peter
Walter, Robert


Lyell, Rt Hon Sir Nicholas
Wardle, Charles


MacGregor, Rt Hon John
Waterson, Nigel


McIntosh, Miss Anne
Wells, Bowen


MacKay, Rt Hon Andrew
Whitney, Sir Raymond


Maclean, Rt Hon David
Whittingdale, John


McLoughlin, Patrick
Widdecombe, Rt Hon Miss Ann


Madel, Sir David
Wilkinson, John


Malins, Humfrey
Willetts, David


Maples, John
Wilshire, David


Mates, Michael
Winterton, Mrs Ann (Congleton)


Maude, Rt Hon Francis
Woodward, Shaun


Mawhinney, Rt Hon Sir Brian
Yeo, Tim


May, Mrs Theresa
Young, Rt Hon Sir George


Moss, Malcolm



Nicholls, Patrick
Tellers for the Ayes:


Ottaway, Richard
Mr. John M. Taylor and


Page, Richard
Mr. Tim Collins.




NOES


Abbott, Ms Diane
Brown, Rt Hon Nick (Newcastle E)


Ainger, Nick
Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon)


Ainsworth, Robert (Cov'try NE)
Burden, Richard


Alexander, Douglas
Burgon, Colin


Allan, Richard
Burnett, John


Allen, Graham
Burstow, Paul


Anderson, Donald (Swansea E)
Butler, Mrs Christine


Ashdown, Rt Hon Paddy
Campbell, Mrs Anne (C'bridge)


Ashton, Joe
Campbell, Menzies (NE Fife)


Austin, John
Campbell-Savours, Dale


Baker, Norman
Cann, Jamie


Ballard, Jackie
Caplin, Ivor


Banks, Tony
Casale, Roger


Barnes, Harry
Caton, Martin


Barron, Kevin
Cawsey, Ian


Bayley, Hugh
Chapman, Ben (Wirral S)


Beard, Nigel
Chaytor, David


Beckett, Rt Hon Mrs Margaret
Chidgey, David


Benn, Rt Hon Tony
Chisholm, Malcolm


Bennett, Andrew F
Clapham, Michael


Benton, Joe
Clark, Rt Hon Dr David (S Shields)


Bermingham, Gerald
Clark, Paul (Gillingham)


Berry, Roger
Clarke, Rt Hon Tom (Coatbridge)


Betts, Clive
Clarke, Tony (Northampton S)


Blears, Ms Hazel
Clwyd, Ann


Blizzard, Bob
Coaker, Vernon


Boateng, Paul
Coffey, Ms Ann


Borrow, David
Coleman, Iain


Bradley, Keith (Withington)
Colman, Tony


Bradley, Peter (The Wrekin)
Connarty, Michael


Breed, Colin
Cook, Frank (Stockton N)


Brinton, Mrs Helen
Cooper, Yvette





Corbett, Robin
Hill, Keith


Cotter, Brian
Hoey, Kate


Cousins, Jim
Home Robertson, John


Cranston, Ross
Hood, Jimmy


Crausby, David
Hoon, Geoffrey


Cryer, John (Hornchurch)
Hopkins, Kelvin


Cummings, John
Howarth, George (Knowsley N)


Cunliffe, Lawrence
Howells, Dr Kim


Cunningham, Jim (Cov'try S)
Hughes, Ms Beverley (Stretford)


Dalyell, Tam
Hughes, Kevin (Doncaster N)


Darling, Rt Hon Alistair
Hughes, Simon (Southwark N)


Darvill, Keith
Humble, Mrs Joan


Davey, Edward (Kingston)
Hurst, Alan


Davey, Valerie (Bristol W)
Hutton, John


Davidson, Ian
Iddon, Dr Brian


Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)
Illsley, Eric


Davies, Geraint (Croydon C)
Jackson, Ms Glenda (Hampstead)


Davies, Rt Hon Ron (Caerphilly)
Jackson, Helen (Hillsborough)


Davis, Terry (B'ham Hodge H)
Jenkins, Brian


Dawson, Hilton
Johnson, Alan (Hull W  Hessle)


Dean, Mrs Janet
Jones, Barry (Alyn  Deeside)


Denham, John
Jones, Helen (Warrington N)


Dismore, Andrew
Jones, Ms Jenny


Dobbin, Jim
(Wolverh'ton SW)


Donohoe, Brian H
Jones, Dr Lynne (Selly Oak)


Doran, Frank
Jones, Martyn (Clwyd S)


Drew, David
Jowell, Rt Hon Ms Tessa


Drown, Ms Julia
Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald


Dunwoody, Mrs Gwyneth
Keeble, Ms Sally


Eagle, Angela (Wallasey)
Keen, Alan (Feltham  Heston)


Edwards, Huw
Keen, Ann (Brentford  Isleworth)


Efford, Clive
Kennedy, Jane (Wavertree)


Ellman, Mrs Louise
Kidney, David


Ennis, Jeff
Kilfoyle, Peter


Etherington, Bill
King, Andy (Rugby  Kenilworth)


Ewing, Mrs Margaret
King, Ms Oona (Bethnal Green)


Fatchett, Rt Hon Derek
Kingham, Ms Tess


Field, Rt Hon Frank
Kirkwood, Archy


Fisher, Mark
Kumar, Dr Ashok


Fitzpatrick, Jim
Ladyman, Dr Stephen


Fitzsimons, Lorna
Lawrence, Ms Jackie


Flynn, Paul
Laxton, Bob


Follett, Barbara
Levitt, Tom


Foster, Don (Bath)
Lewis, Ivan (Bury S)


Foster, Michael Jabez (Hastings)
Lewis, Terry (Worsley)


Foulkes, George
Linton, Martin


Fyfe, Maria
Lloyd, Tony (Manchester C)


Gapes, Mike
Llwyd, Elfyn


George, Andrew (St Ives)
Lock, David


George, Bruce (Walsall S)
Love, Andrew


Gerrard, Neil
McAllion, John


Gibson, Dr Ian
McAvoy, Thomas


Gilroy, Mrs Linda
McCafferty, Ms Chris


Godman, Dr Norman A
McCartney, Ian (Makerfield)


Godsiff, Roger
McDonagh, Siobhain


Golding, Mrs Llin
McDonnell, John


Gordon, Mrs Eileen
McGuire, Mrs Anne


Gorrie, Donald
McIsaac, Shona


Griffiths, Jane (Reading E)
Mackinlay, Andrew


Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)
Maclennan, Rt Hon Robert


Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)
Mactaggart, Fiona


Grocott, Bruce
McWalter, Tony


Grogan, John
Mahon, Mrs Alice


Gunnell, John
Mallaber, Judy


Hall, Mike (Weaver Vale)
Mandelson, Rt Hon Peter


Hall, Patrick (Bedford)
Marsden, Gordon (Blackpool S)


Hamilton, Fabian (Leeds NE)
Marsden, Paul (Shrewsbury)


Hancock, Mike
Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)


Hanson, David
Marshall-Andrews, Robert


Heal, Mrs Sylvia
Martlew, Eric


Heath, David (Somerton  Frome)
Maxton, John


Henderson, Doug (Newcastle N)
Meacher, Rt Hon Michael


Hepburn, Stephen
Meale, Alan


Heppell, John
Merron, Gillian


Hesford, Stephen
Michie, Bill (Shef'ld Heeley)


Hewitt, Ms Patricia
Miller, Andrew






Mitchell, Austin
Smith, Angela (Basildon)


Moffatt, Laura
Smith, Miss Geraldine


Moonie, Dr Lewis
(Morecambe  Lunesdale)


Morgan, Ms Julie (Cardiff N)
Smith, Jacqui (Redditch)


Morley, Elliot
Smith, John (Glamorgan)


Mudie, George
Smith, Llew (Blaenau Gwent)


Mullin, Chris
Smith, Sir Robert (W Ab'd'ns)


Murphy, Denis (Wansbeck)
Soley, Clive


Naysmith, Dr Doug
Southworth, Ms Helen


O'Brien, Bill (Normanton)
Squire, Ms Rachel


O'Brien, Mike (N Warks)
Starkey, Dr Phyllis


O'Hara, Eddie
Steinberg, Gerry


Olner, Bill
Stevenson, George


O'Neill, Martin
Stewart, Ian (Eccles)


Palmer, Dr Nick
Stinchcombe, Paul


Pearson, Ian
Stott, Roger


Pendry, Tom
Stringer, Graham


Perham, Ms Linda
Stuart, Ms Gisela


Pickthall, Colin
Stunell, Andrew


Pike, Peter L
Taylor, Rt Hon Mrs Ann


Plaskitt, James
(Dewsbury)


Pollard, Kerry
Taylor, Ms Dari (Stockton S)


Pond, Chris
Taylor, David (NW Leics)


Pope, Greg
Taylor, Matthew (Truro)


Powell, Sir Raymond
Temple-Morris, Peter


Prentice, Ms Bridget (Lewisham E)
Thomas, Gareth (Clwyd W)


Prentice, Gordon (Pendle)
Thomas, Gareth R (Harrow W)


Prescott, Rt Hon John
Timms, Stephen


Prosser, Gwyn
Tipping, Paddy


Purchase, Ken
Touhig, Don


Quinn, Lawrie
Trickett, Jon


Radice, Giles
Truswell, Paul


Rammell, Bill
Turner, Dennis (Wolverh'ton SE)


Rapson, Syd
Turner, Dr Desmond (Kemptown)


Raynsford, Nick
Twigg, Stephen (Enfield)


Reed, Andrew (Loughborough)
Tyler, Paul


Reid, Rt Hon Dr John (Hamilton N)
Vaz, Keith


Rendel, David
Vis, Dr Rudi


Robertson, Rt Hon George
Walley, Ms Joan


(Hamilton S)
Wareing, Robert N


Roche, Mrs Barbara
Watts, David


Rooker, Jeff
Webb, Steve


Rooney, Terry
White, Brian


Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)
Whitehead, Dr Alan


Rowlands, Ted
Wicks, Malcolm


Ruane, Chris
Williams, Alan W (E Carmarthen)


Ruddock, Joan
Willis, Phil


Russell, Bob (Colchester)
Wills, Michael


Russell, Ms Christine (Chester)
Winnick, David


Salter, Martin
Winterton, Ms Rosie (Doncaster C)


Sanders, Adrian
Wise, Audrey


Savidge, Malcolm
Wood, Mike


Sawford, Phil
Woolas, Phil


Sedgemore, Brian
Worthington, Tony


Shaw, Jonathan
Wray, James


Sheerman, Barry
Wright, Anthony D (Gt Yarmouth)


Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert
Wright, Dr Tony (Cannock)


Shipley, Ms Debra
Wyatt, Derek


Short, Rt Hon Clare



Simpson, Alan (Nottingham S)
Tellers for the Noes:


Skinner, Dennis
Mr. David Jamieson and Mr. Jim Dowd.


Smith, Rt Hon Andrew (Oxford E)

Question accordingly negatived.

Mrs. Eleanor Laing: I beg to move amendment No. 2, in page 1, line 6, at end add

`except that—

(a) 75 hereditary peers shall be elected as members of the House of Lords in accordance with subsection (2).
(b) 14 hereditary peers shall be elected as members of the House of Lords in accordance with subsection (3).
(c) the Lord Great Chamberlain and the Earl Marshal shall be members of the House of Lords.

(2) The electors for the purposes of subsection (1)(a) shall be the holders of a hereditary peerage.

(3) The electors for the purposes of subsection (1)(b) shall be the members of the House of Lords.

(4) The Secretary of State may by order make such provision about the conduct of the elections under this section as he considers appropriate.

(5) No order under this section shall be made unless a draft of the statutory instrument containing it has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, each House of Parliament.'.

The First Deputy Chairman: With this, it will be convenient to discuss the following: amendment No. 3, in page 1, line 6, at end add
`, unless he or she is the first holder of a hereditary peerage.'.
amendment No. 25, in page 1, line 6, at end insert
`and any transitional arrangement enabling certain hereditary peers to continue their membership of that House shall cease to have effect on the expiry of the period of twelve months from the date of publication of the final report of the Joint Committee of both Houses of Parliament announced in Command Paper No. 4183'.
Amendment No. 16, in clause 4, page 1, line 14, leave out from 'force' to end of line and insert
`on a date not less than six months after the passing of this Act nominated by the Secretary of State'.
Amendment No. 17, in page 1, line 16, leave out `Session' and insert 'date'.
Amendment No. 18, in page 1, line 16, at end insert—
'(2A) Prior to nominating a date for the coming into force of this Act the Secretary of State shall make inquiry and lay a report before both Houses of Parliament, setting out the names of all current hereditary peers who have played a significant role in the workings of the House of Lords during the ten years preceding the passing of this Act; and such hereditary peers shall be entitled to remain members of the House of Lords, pending the enactment of proposals for the wider reform of the House of Lords following the report of the Royal Commission and public consultation concerning its proposals.'.
New clause 12—Peerage of Scotland—
`( ) Nothing in this Act shall be taken to prevent sixteen peers from the peerage of Scotland from voting in the House of Lords.'.
Amendment No. 10, in title, line 1, leave out 'End' and insert 'Restrict'.

Mrs. Laing: The amendment would allow 91 hereditary peers to remain as Members of the House of Lords during the so-called interim stage. As hon. Members will be well aware, a compromise to that effect was drawn up by Lord Weatherill, his intention being to secure the continued presence of an independent element in the interim House of Lords.
I do not support the hereditary principle. It is time that Labour Members acknowledged that Conservative Members do not seek to amend the Bill to uphold the hereditary rights of peers. We do not: we seek to amend the Bill to uphold democracy itself. For democracy to work, it is essential that Parliament is strong. It is the role of both Houses of Parliament to hold the Government to account. This Government are not concerned about upholding democracy; they are interested only in their own party political advantage and in increasing the power of the Executive by decreasing the power of Parliament.
While appearing to argue that they are acting in the name of democracy, the Government are in fact doing the opposite. Their argument is nothing less than a disgraceful sham. They want to appear to strengthen the democratic


process, but the real effect of their proposals to reform the House of Lords will be considerably to weaken our democracy. Removing all independence from the second Chamber will undermine its validity, which will, in turn, weaken its ability to challenge the Government.

Mr. Gerald Bermingham: If there is an upper House composed partly of Labour appointees, partly of Conservative appointees and partly of an independent chunk appointed by either party or by other parties, how will the retention of 91 hereditary peers—who will doubtless be mainly Conservative—weaken the democracy of the place? I should have thought that it would enhance it.

Mrs. Laing: I am talking not about the democracy of the House of Lords, but about the democratic process as a whole. Parliament defends democracy, and it is supposed to hold the Government to account. To do so, both Houses of Parliament must be able to play their own roles in holding the Executive to account. That is why it is important to consider reform of the House of Lords in the context of constitutional reform in general and how Parliament works.
It is all too often forgotten—the hon. Member for St. Helens, South (Mr. Bermingham) seems to have forgotten it—that Parliament acts as one entity. I do not suggest that having a seat by appointment or because of who one's father was is democratic in any way. If the second Chamber—whatever form it takes—is strong, the democratic process itself will work better. If it is weak, the democratic process is weakened with it. That idea lies at the heart of what we are discussing.
The Leader of the House would like to appear as the champion of the old socialist ideal, as a revolutionary attacking wealth and privilege. I should be happy to give way to her if she wishes to tell me that I am wrong. The glee with which she announced the clause abolishing the rights of hereditary peers was almost vindictive.

Mr. Letwin: Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the most remarkable things said by any Leader of the House at any time was the present Leader's remark that nothing could be worse than the existing Chamber?

Mrs. Laing: I agree, of course, with my hon. Friend. The Leader of the House also remarked that the Bill was simple, and that remark, too, was totally wrong. The Bill is simple only in the sense that it addresses only part of the issue. It is up to the Opposition to address the whole issue.
The Leader of the House approached the Bill with a certain vindictive pleasure. None the less, I do not challenge the Government's right to take away the voting rights of hereditary peers. Nor do I challenge the principle of doing so; in fact, I agree with it. However, I must challenge the Government's lack of honesty about what they are doing. The Government's plan, as stated in the Bill, is to have, for an indefinite period which could be years, decades or even longer, a second Chamber composed entirely of people who have been appointed and who, therefore, will owe allegiance to those who appointed them.
Amendment No. 2 would include in the interim second Chamber a number of hereditary peers elected by the Members of the House of Lords. Such a system would strengthen the interim House because it would keep within it the element of independence while adding to the legitimacy of the hereditary peers who would remain because their tenure would depend on a double condition: first, their birth and, secondly, their election by the Members of their own House. I am not claiming that that would create a perfect situation, but it is a much better solution than that proposed in the Bill.
There are as many differing points of view about the eventual composition of the second Chamber as there are people expressing them; but almost no one is arguing in the long term for a second Chamber that is entirely appointed, so why on earth should we settle for an entirely appointed interim Chamber? The Government could do—indeed, are likely to do and, I would argue, certainly will do—an awful lot of harm to our country while only the interim second Chamber, which we are now discussing, is in place to hold them to account.

Mr. Phil Willis: Does the hon. Lady accept that it was Lord Cranborne who suggested the idea? Is she distancing herself and the rest of the Tory party from Lord Cranborne's idea?

Mrs. Laing: No, far from it. I believe that my colleagues whose names are attached to the amendment and I have the support of the vast majority of the Tory party in this House, in another place and across the country. However, it remains to be seen what will happen if there is a vote.
My point it that there is no reason why we should settle for an interim Chamber that is entirely appointed, when no one wants a long-term Chamber that is entirely appointed. We may have that interim Chamber for a very long time, during which the new Labour Government could do an awful lot of harm, given that only the interim Chamber, as the other half of this Parliament, would be holding the Government to account. It is our duty to make sure that the composition of the interim House makes that House as strong and effective as possible. That is why I am asking hon. Members to support the amendment.
Of course, if the Government had had their way, we would not even be able to discuss the substance of the amendment.

Mr. Swayne: Shame, shame.

Mrs. Laing: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. If the Government were honest in their approach to the Bill, and if they were dealing with the Committee straightforwardly, the substance of amendment No. 2 would appear in the Bill, as it should. I appreciate that not every hon. Member will agree with my arguments in favour of the amendment, and that is fair enough. Of course, Labour Members will have a different point of view, but surely there can be no hon. Member who does not believe that we, as the elected representatives of the people, should be discussing this matter. It is not only the right but the duty of the House of Commons to scrutinise the proposal. Had my hon. Friends and I not tabled the amendment, the matter that we are about to discuss would not have come before a Committee of the whole House. We are not alone in that opinion.
Charter 88, which campaigns for democracy, said in its recent brief:
The House of Commons is being asked to scrutinise a Bill which every MP knows will come back from the Lords with a substantial amendment. The Commons will only have limited opportunity to debate the Bill in its final form.
That is right, except that the tabling of amendment No. 2 has given us the opportunity to scrutinise this part of the Bill this evening.
It would be preposterous if such an important part of the Bill were never scrutinised in Committee by this elected House of Commons. Every week provides more evidence of the Government's attempt to take power away from the House of Commons, and so from the people who elected us, and to give more power to the Executive. That is the Bill's underlying intention and it explains why the Government do not want to allow us to discuss the matter.

Dr. Fox: Does my hon. Friend agree that it is not preposterous, but perverse, for the Government to ask Labour Members to reject the amendment in the Chamber that they claim has democratic legitimacy and to tell their supporters to accept it in another place, which they claim has no democratic legitimacy?

Mrs. Laing: It is preposterous, perverse and a string of other things that you would stop me saying if I tried, Mr. Lord. As my hon. Friend said, it is anti-democratic. I have never seen a more blatant disregard for the House of Commons than that which the Government have shown in relation to this amendment.
Paragraph 11 of chapter 5 of the White Paper "Modernising Parliament—Reforming the House of Lords" states:
the Government will act immediately to end the hereditary right to be a member of Parliament … But if the cross-bench peers promote an amendment for the interim retention of 1 in 10 of the hereditary peers, 75 out of the existing 750, plus some hereditary office holders, until the second stage of House of Lords reform has taken place, the Government is minded to accept that amendment".
Likewise, introducing the White Paper, the Leader of the House said that if there were such an amendment when the Bill was considered in the House of Lords
the Government are minded to support such an amendment".—[Official Report, 20 January 1999; Vol. 323, c. 909.]
The effect of this amendment is precisely the same, so can I look forward to the Leader of the House signalling the Government's intention of accepting it now?

Mr. Peter Bottomley: She will not look at you.

Mrs. Laing: As my hon. Friend says, the right hon. Lady will not look at me; she merely listens. She has every opportunity to signal her Government's intention of accepting the amendment now; she said only two weeks ago in this House that they had every intention of doing so. Will she answer my point? No, she will not.

Mrs. Beckett: I do not know why the hon. Lady is wasting the Committee's time with this nonsense.
She knows perfectly well what the Government's position is, because I set it out on Second Reading and I shall set it out again when I reply to this amendment.

Mrs. Laing: How dare the right hon. Lady say that I am wasting my time or anyone else's in discussing this vital amendment? I am not wasting the Committee's time. She is wasting it and treating the House of Commons and Parliament with contempt with that answer. I do not know the Government's position, because she has never made it clear.

Dr. Starkey: Will the hon. Lady give way?

Mrs. Laing: I shall give way to the hon. Lady later.
It is no surprise that the Leader of the House refuses to take my point. Having said what she said on 20 January, on 1 February in the debate on Second Reading, in reply to questions on this subject from the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) and my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack), she said:
If an amendment is moved in this place, I shall advise my right hon. and hon. Friends to vote against it".— [Official Report, 1 February 1999; Vol. 324, c. 610.]
The right hon. Lady said a moment ago that I know the Government's position. How can I possibly know the Government's position? How can anyone in this House, or anywhere else, know the Government's position, given that, on 20 January, she said clearly, and on the record, that the Government have every intention of accepting the amendment, but, on 1 February, she said that she would advise her right hon. and hon. Friends to vote against any such amendment? How can she possibly expect anyone to know the Government's position?
8.45 pm
This is a vital constitutional Bill; it is not some little measure which does not matter very much. The Leader of the House still sits, reading her notes, not paying the least attention, after saying, with utter smugness, that we know the Government's position. We do not. Her position, and the way in which she explains what the Government intend to do, may be clever, but it is not consistent and, frankly, it is not honest. But, then, the Government's whole approach to the Bill has been all about expediency, and nothing whatever to do with principle.
During previous speeches on the matter, the Leader of the House explained the relevance of this apparent duplicity to the working of the Parliament Acts, but the purpose of the Parliament Acts has never been to stop this House debating a fundamental change to our constitution; nor has it been to stop Members of Parliament scrutinising a vital part of a Bill. We have the opportunity to do so now only because my hon. Friends and I brought the matter before the Committee. The Government do not want it to be discussed.
It should not be up to me and my hon. Friends to table an amendment of such fundamental effect to a Bill as important as this. We are but humble Opposition Back Benchers, but we know that we were sent here by the people who elected us to represent their interests and to stand up for the democratic process. This Bill is the most significant piece of constitutional reform for well over a century.
Unusually, I find myself in agreement with the right hon. Member for Chesterfield—not once, but twice, this sitting. First, he pointed out that, during an earlier debate on constitutional reform, Mr. Asquith said that, if women got the vote, it would undermine parliamentary democracy. The right hon. Gentleman said that Mr. Asquith was wrong, and I am very happy to agree with him. Secondly, he said—I think that I noted his words correctly—that Opposition Members should not try to persuade the Committee that hereditary peers are the final safeguard of democracy. In speaking to this amendment, I certainly do not try to persuade hon. Members of any such thing. It is we, the elected Members of the House of Commons, who have a duty to safeguard democracy.
The Government have acted with almost unbelievable arrogance in trying to prevent us from debating this vital amendment to this extremely important constitutional Bill. I hope that all hon. Members with a conscience, who believe in democracy, will stand up against the Government's arrogance and attempt to pervert the democratic process itself by joining my hon. Friends and me in supporting the amendment.

Mr. Tony Benn: I shall vote against the amendment tonight and I shall vote against it when it comes back from the House of Lords. I hope that my hon. Friends have the guts to stick by the Whips' first instructions and not reverse their vote on the second instructions.
As we are discussing an hereditary issue, I want to consider the parentage of the amendment moved by the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing), who spoke with great passion. When I heard her speak, I knew even more that Asquith was wrong. An Opposition Back-Bench Member has made a Government statement. The parentage of the Bill is a strange one: Baroness Jay and Lord Cranborne. They are not even married, but they have produced a proposal—with the support of Jack Weatherill, the former Speaker—and we are told to oppose it now and come back to it later. That is not acceptable. The Leader of the House will discover from these debates that the House of Commons is waking up to its responsibilities and is not prepared just to be told to go through the hoops.
I am absolutely opposed to the hon. Lady's amendment. I shall tell the House what will happen if it goes through. The Government are very clever; they have all sorts of people advising them. The amendment will be defeated tonight. It will go to the Lords, and they will have to make up their mind whether to lose everything under the Parliament Act or to go along with the Cranborne compromise. They will probably go along with it. Then, the Government will be faced with a situation absolutely contrary to our manifesto, whereby 91 hereditary peers will turn up—not with constituencies like Epping Forest, but with a couple of dukes, two marquesses and the odd viscount who wanted them to stay. How will those 91 peers be allowed to stay? They will be allowed to stay by the Prime Minister making those unelected, unaccountable hereditary peers into life peers. He is going to bless them retrospectively.
Not only that, the Government have the problem of five hereditary peers of the first generation. There is poor old Willie Whitelaw. I had a letter from the Leader of the House—it cannot be a secret that he will be offered a

life peerage. Then there is David Eccles—I do not know whether anyone remembers him, but I sat in the House with him. He is to be made a life peer.
The position is astonishing. If the amendment goes through—I hope that it will not—the first example of modernisation for the millennium will be the Prime Minister making 91 hereditary peers into life peers and then, because they will mainly be Tory, he will make 91 more Labour life peers. In the book of Genesis, the Almighty just made Adam and Eve. This is creation on a scale for which there is no parallel in religious or constitutional history. I urge my hon. Friends to obey the Whip tonight. The Whip is absolutely right. However, when they are told to turn tail later, they must not endorse the scheme that will run counter to the manifesto on which we were elected.
We are not discussing alternatives, but I have a very simple idea. It is old fashioned—old Labour. If someone is in Parliament, he or she should be elected. I do not want to say anything controversial, as I might get into trouble, but I was brought up to believe that democracy meant that we elected people and could get rid of them. I am not going along with the Weatherill amendment, and I am not going along with the amendment tonight, but that is for another debate. Tonight we certainly ought not to accept what the hon. Lady put forward with such passion, even though her arguments had a certain charm and compulsion about them, which I shall long remember.

Mr. John MacGregor: I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing) on the way in which she moved the amendment. Her arguments were splendid, and the spirit and passion with which she advanced them were entirely commendable.
I shall make two points in support of what my hon. Friend said, but first I shall make my position clear. I do not defend the hereditary principle either, and never have done. The real problem, as we are discovering and as has been discovered in the past, is what to put in its place.
My first point concerns the attitude of the Government and the Leader of the House. I find her position astonishing, hypocritical and intolerable. I should think that many Labour Back Benchers feel the same. The White Paper is full of phrases about the primacy and supremacy of this Chamber, yet what are the Government proposing to do? They will leave it to the other Chamber to carry through something which, in the same White Paper, they say they would be minded to accept. Frankly, that is treating this House with contempt.
If it were not for my hon. Friends who tabled the amendment, we would not even have debated such a vital issue in the Chamber before the Bill went to the House of Lords. No doubt, when it came back with an amendment that the Government were prepared to accept, we would have had a very limited debate. It is much, much better that it is debated here in the Chamber, where it should be debated.
I shall be interested to hear what the Labour Back Benchers who are present will say in defence of the principle. The right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) is entirely consistent in his arguments. He will vote against any such amendment both times. However, the Government have indicated that they are in favour of the amendment, but will accept it only if it is


first put into the Bill in another place. We all know why that is so. It is because the Leader of the House is trying bully-girl tactics, if I may say so, to get the Bill through the other place by allowing the amendment as a concession. That is an astonishing way to treat Labour Back Benchers. They are forced through the Lobby tonight to vote against the amendment but, in the other place, which is regarded as secondary from their point of view in terms of Parliament, the Government will turn round and accept the amendment when it is proposed.
I do not understand why the Leader of the House cannot say from the Dispatch Box, "We shall accept the amendment." The Government may have the odd technical objection to it, but that is not the point. The point is that the spirit and principle of the amendment should be accepted tonight. I cannot understand any reason for not accepting the amendment other than that the right hon. Lady wants to apply a certain amount of pressure on the other place to take the Bill through quickly. That is simply intolerable.

Mr. Winnick: Is it not interesting that the amendment comes from the Opposition Back Benches and not from the Opposition Front Bench? We know about the row that resulted in Lord Cranborne being sacked. I am entirely opposed to a totally elected second Chamber—we shall come to that argument in due course—but in this instance we are dealing with an Opposition Back-Bench amendment.

Mr. MacGregor: I am sure that my colleagues on the Opposition Front Bench will make the Opposition's position on the amendment perfectly clear. However, I am delighted that the amendment was proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest, because it could not have been better put. I think that all her arguments were superbly well advanced.
I seriously think that the Leader of the House is in an astonishing position and one that she will come to regret. The right hon. Lady has treated the Chamber with contempt.
My other point was simply—

Mrs. Beckett: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. I know that he is making a series of party points, and that is perfectly legitimate. We do that in the House. However, he has thrown about, with great casualness, accusations of my despising the House and things of that sort. He is surely aware that the proposal put forward by the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing) is one that she is advancing and one which the House can debate. It is a proposal that may be put in another place by Cross-Bench peers. It is not the Government's proposal, so why should the Government put it forward?

Mr. MacGregor: I am not making party points. I am making a point about the House of Commons, and I shall explain why. The right hon. Lady has made it clear in the White Paper that if such an amendment comes forward in another place the Government will be disposed to accept it. The amendment is before us this evening, so why is she not disposed to accept it—yet if Cross-Bench peers in

another place put it forward, she will? It is not that the proposal has changed in any way. It has not. It is a proposal that is identical to the one that we shall expect to come from the other place. The right hon. Lady knows that. She knows also that she will not accept the amendment when it is proposed in the House of Commons, but will accept it when it comes from another place—which is apparently, in the Government's view, secondary in importance to the House of Commons.

Mr. Malcolm Savidge: The right hon. Gentleman has told us that it is intolerable, astonishing and hypocritical to reject the Weatherill proposal in the House of Commons but to accept it in the House of Lords. I take it that he is describing his right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition on the day when he sacked Lord Cranborne.

Mr. MacGregor: I am describing precisely the Government's position on this issue. I would expect all of my right hon. and hon. Friends to support the amendment this evening. I am describing the Government's position, and that is why I find the right hon. Lady's position astonishing. It is astonishing for her to ask Labour Back-Bench Members to vote against the proposal when it is put forward in the House of Commons, but to accept it if it comes from another place.
It is not only that—and this is the answer to the right hon. Lady. She has signalled in advance what she would do in the other place. There is no question of the arguments being different or of her changing her mind. The arguments will be acceptable only if they come from the other place and not from the House of Commons.

Mr. Dalyell: The right hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I say that, from our point of view, when we were on the Opposition Benches he was one of the most satisfactory and kind Leaders of the House with whom we ever had to deal. I ask him, therefore, what would he do if he were Leader of the House at this point. I am just curious to know.

Mr. MacGregor: I think that it must be fairly obvious what I would do. I would certainly not produce a White Paper in which I had more or less made it clear that I was minded to accept an amendment, but only if it came from the other place, and then stand at the Dispatch Box refusing to accept such an amendment because it had been tabled in this House. I simply cannot imagine myself ever being in that position, which is why I feel so strongly that the Leader of the House is in a very odd position indeed.

Mr. Letwinr: Does my right hon. Friend agree that an even more extraordinary fact is that the Government appear to think that the proposal would be good for the constitution if their lordships had behaved themselves, but is bad for the constitution if their lordships are not behaving themselves?

Mr. MacGregor: That is why I said that the position of the Leader of the House is hypocritical. It has nothing to do with the merits of the argument, but is purely to do with what I described as bully-girl tactics applied to the other place. That is the reason for her holding such a position tonight: it has nothing to do with the merits or


the principle, or the acceptance or otherwise, of the amendment, but is simply to do with tactics. That is clearly bare faced.

Mr. Savidge: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. MacGregor: In a moment. I should have thanked the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) very much for his kind remarks about my tenure in the post that we are discussing.

Mr. Savidge: Might the right hon. Gentleman accept the possibility that, rather than there being bully-boy tactics from this House, we are resisting the possibility of bully-boy tactics in the other House?

Mr. MacGregor: The Government must be in a weak position if they think that they would not be able to get the Bill through the other House unless they applied pure bully-boy tactics.
My second point relates to the substance of the proposal. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest, who made it clear that many different views and solutions had been suggested during consideration of the alternatives for reform of the House of Lords. That was also made clear in the debate on Second Reading, which I was able to attend only spasmodically.
My hon. Friend was also right to say that the one solution that no one seemed to favour was an entirely appointed second Chamber, which is what we would have if the amendment were not passed. Having been in the same position as the Leader of the House, and having had to get legislation through the House, my fear is similar to many others that have been expressed: this solution will not be short-term and interim, but it will last for some considerable time.
I disagree with the right hon. Member for Chesterfield on that point. If the situation is not purely interim but longer term—I will come on to that point in a moment—it will not be satisfactory to have a solution in which patronage is concentrated so heavily in the hands of the Prime Minister, or even with the appointments commissioner. We would have no further independent element, so the proposal makes some sense if we are to have an interim House of Lords for some considerable time.
I use the words "some considerable time" because there have been considerable delays with a number of the Government's proposals or in areas on which they want to move. I will not stray out of order, Mr. Lord, because I am giving an example of why the amendment is necessary. The Neill committee, of which I am a member, has introduced proposals on party political funding which have widespread support in the House and which it ought to be possible to take through fairly quickly. We will produce a draft Bill and proposals may be introduced next year.
One could give many other examples of delays, but the reasons for delays with the second Bill, which will deal with full reform of the House of Lords, are likely to be much more formidable. There must be some doubt whether the royal commission can meet the deadline of the end of this year, because many different proposals will have to be argued through.
The Joint Committee of both Houses could take up a considerable amount of time. If the general election is to be brought forward to a year before the end of the full five-year term, as is hinted in some of the newspapers, it is unlikely that we will be able to deal with the second, highly controversial Bill—about which there will be much more argument in this Chamber and in the other Chamber—because there will be many different views about parts of it. It seems very likely that we shall not have the second stage by the end of this Parliament. There is a good reason of substance for supporting the amendment because it would mean that, in the interim—which could be some years—we would have a much more satisfactory second Chamber than we would under the Government's proposals.
I should have thought that the Leader of the House would accept those arguments. For those two reasons, I strongly support the amendment.

Dr. Tony Wright: It is difficult to take entirely seriously some of the voices coming from the Opposition Benches, which accuse the Government of contempt and arrogance. It is difficult to understand how the Government could have proceeded in a more conciliatory and bipartisan way. They have relinquished patronage powers to the Appointments Commission; they have said that they will entertain a Cross-Bench proposal to retain a large number of hereditary peers chosen for the transitional duration; and they have established a royal commission chaired by a peer belonging to the Opposition. For a Government who have done all that to be accused of arrogance and contempt is extraordinary.

Mr. Tyrie: Does the hon. Gentleman think that it was ever part of the Labour Government's original plan to have a royal commission? Is there anything conciliatory about deciding to go ahead with such a fundamental reform with no prior all-party consultation, as has always taken place in the past when fundamental reform of the Lords has been considered?

Dr. Wright: The hon. Gentleman gets into territory that he would be well advised not to get into. When the facts of the case are eventually written, he will see that, had the Government been able to secure agreement from the Opposition, they were minded to proceed on a consensual basis. As is well known, there were conversations afoot in the other place designed to bring that about. Unfortunately—I am afraid that the problem lay more in the Commons than with the Opposition in the end—it proved impossible to do that. We could have been considering a joint proposal on an agreed basis, but the Opposition decided to proceed differently, and that is a source of great regret.
If anything is true of this measure, after all this time and all its history, it is that we should have been able to bring about reform of the second Chamber on a reasonably agreed basis. We can argue about all sorts of things, and many complex details can be considered but, in view of everything that we know about the failure of past reforms, to be unable to proceed in a sensible, bipartisan way in the last year of this century is a most extraordinary position to be in. It is a source of great regret that those discussions did not bear fruit.
Had the Government taken what someone earlier called the "big bang approach" and said, "This is what we have decided to do: sweep away the hereditaries and install a


new second Chamber," the charges of contempt and arrogance would have had some substance. However, given that they are proceeding in an immensely bipartisan way—to many of my colleagues it is over-generous—it is extraordinary to be confronted with those charges.

Mr. Gale: If the hon. Gentleman consults the Official Report—he is not using notes—he will discover that a few moments ago he said that the Government had generously agreed to accept a Cross-Bench amendment. That amendment is precisely what we are discussing now. Will the hon. Gentleman vote for it tonight or will he do as his Whips want and vote against it? If so, he will be as two-faced as the rest of his colleagues. Labour Members will then wait for the amendment to come back to this House and vote for it. This is the amendment which he says the Government have graciously accepted.

Dr. Wright: Having paid close attention to the conversations that have taken place over the past few months, I concluded that the Conservative Opposition in the House of Commons had disqualified themselves from making any constructive contribution to the debate, and that, if we were to secure a constructive contribution—albeit at a late stage—from Cross-Bench peers, we ought to consider that very carefully. That is what the Government have said they will do.

Mr. Tyrie: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Dr. Wright: I should like to make some progress, but I will give way once more.

Mr. Tyrie: Does the hon. Gentleman not realise that all-party consultation should not involve deals made below stairs or in smoke-filled rooms? At the beginning of a Parliament, the Government should announce that they want to act on the basis of all-party consultation. They should announce a public debate, a public inquiry and a royal commission—if they want one—that will also be public. That is what has always happened in the past. It happened in 1918, in 1948 and in 1968. Why did the Government not do the same on this occasion?

Dr. Wright: The hon. Gentleman is most ill-advised to keep reminding us of the history. Less than two years ago, his party fought a general election defending the rights of hereditary peers and opposing reform of the second Chamber. The right hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. MacGregor), alluding quite properly to the issue of party funding, failed to mention that, when in government, his party refused to refer the whole issue of party funding to the Committee on Standards in Public Life. There is a history to all this, and I am afraid that, when it comes to be written, the Conservative party in the House of Commons will not come out of it very well.
We know that there is to be a transitional period. Whichever way we play it, the transitional House of Lords is a complex beast. I once spent a long time talking to Marxists, who used to talk constantly about the "problems of the transition"; but the "problems of the transition" are nothing in comparison with the problems of moving from the existing House of Lords to a future House. It is likely

to be a protracted and messy business. Even when we have removed the hereditary peers, we shall have about 500 life peers.

Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Dr. Wright: I must get on.
We are now talking about adding nearly 100 more hereditary peers, to be elected by their own peers. We are talking about a Chamber consisting of 600 Members in the transitional period. Anyone looking at a mature, fully formed new House of Lords will know that it will contain only about 300 Members. We shall therefore experience considerable problems in moving from an interim reformed House to a fully fledged new House.

Mr. Clifton-Brown: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Dr. Wright: I will give way once more.

Mr. Clifton-Brown: Does the hon. Gentleman—who is a constitutional expert—agree with a Weatherill-type amendment to allow a certain number of hereditary peers to continue to serve in the transitional Parliament? Yes or no?

Dr. Wright: I shall be minded to support such an amendment when it comes here from the other place.

Sir Patrick Cormack: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Dr. Wright: There is no need to become too agitated. I shall make a few more points, and then sit down.
The Government have said that they are minded to accept such an amendment if it comes from the other place. They do not have to do that, and many of my hon. Friends would prefer that they did not. They would like a clean sweep: they would like the job to be done in one go. I think that this is an act of extraordinary generosity—

Sir Patrick Cormack: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Dr. Wright: Of course.

Sir Patrick Cormack: I am extremely grateful.
Is this a good idea, or is it not? If it is a good idea, why does the hon. Gentleman not support it now? If it is a bad idea, why does he not remain resolutely opposed to it, whatever its source? Can he not give a coherent answer to a simple question?

Dr. Wright: I have already explained—I am sorry if I must embarrass the hon. Gentleman by explaining again—why I think that the Conservative Opposition have disqualified themselves from making a constructive contribution to the argument. History will testify to that.
I did not start out by believing that I wanted a transitional stage involving the retention of a certain number of hereditary peers; but, if the real problems of the transition would be eased by our allowing a certain number of hereditary peers to continue for a period, and if


that will allow this measure to proceed in a constructive and bipartisan way, I would support it. Moreover, I would urge the hon. Gentleman to follow the same course.

Mr. Tony McWalter: Will my hon. Friend confirm that one of the Government's clear strategies is to ensure that we prevent 668 people, nearly all of whom never attend the House of Lords, from being able to legislate for the rest of the country? If, as a result of the Government's moves, we achieve that in quick time—within a year—that is an important part of the process that we are undergoing.

Dr. Wright: I agree. As the Opposition provoke me a little, I say that we have to remind ourselves that we are still dealing with an outrage. We are dealing not with an anachronism, or a bit of tidying up in which we have to engage, but a constitutional and democratic outrage.

Sir Nicholas Lyell: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Dr. Wright: I will not give way again.
I do not want to detain the Committee with things that I did not want to explore, but the fact is that we are dealing with hereditary peers who, as we heard—

Sir Nicholas Lyell: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Dr. Wright: I just said that I was not going to give way.
Never did we have a better exposition of what has sometimes been called the good chaps theory of government than in the speech of the hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack). Those people are good chaps and chapesses, but the point is that they are contaminated by their ancestry and will never escape from that contamination, good chaps though they might be. I call in aid only the first study on the purchase of peerages. It turned on correspondence between the Conservative leader of the time, Lord Salisbury, and the then Conservative Chief Whip, Akers-Douglas. A footnote in that little study says simply:
At the request of the Marquess of Salisbury I have suppressed the details of a number of transactions in which political services were bartered for honours, lest their revelation should prove offensive to the surviving children of those concerned.
When we have such discussions, we think that we are engaged in just a little tidying up, but we are not. What is extraordinary is that we are having this discussion not in the first year of the century, but in the last, and that we still hear that type of arguments expressed by Conservative Members about why we should not do what any democratic society knows has to be done and should have been done. The question is only whether we can do it in a reasonably civilised, consensual and bipartisan way. That is the Government's approach.
Without digressing, let me say that there are legitimate arguments about the shape of a reformed Chamber. I say to those who simply advance their nostrums as we go through the debate: reflect on the fact that we now have a royal commission and a chance to test some of those arguments.
Some people say, "The second Chamber has to be elected." We have to avoid two evils. One is to create a rival for the House of Commons, but the other to is create

a clone of the House of Commons. If, through election and a whipped, rigid party-list system, we created a second Chamber on good democratic principles that was simply a clone of the House of Commons, it would be proper to ask whether we had strengthened the checks and balances in our political system or weakened them.
We are at a moment when we are required to have some serious constitutional imagination. Let us put our nostrums to one side. Let us have a year or more of serious investigation, debate and argument, but, meanwhile, ensure that we establish a transitional House that can function and have a certain amount of legitimacy and confidence. The only proviso that I add—it is the point of the amendment that stands in my name—is that we must not have a transitional House that becomes permanent. We must not invent a system in which a certain number of hereditary peers not only stay for a time—which is necessary to ease the transition—but subsequently become permanent. We have to build the Bill around that constraining framework.
It is quite right—although it is a rather unusual procedure—for the Government to ask us to approve a Bill to which an amendment will be tabled in the other place that the Government will be minded to support. We know that that will happen.

Mr. Grieve: Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that very point?

Dr. Wright: No; I am almost finished.
It is quite proper that the House, when it sends the Bill to another place, should want to say: "We want to build a framework around the Bill, to ensure that the generous transitional provisions that we are making will not become permanent ones." That would be the honest thing to do. It is what the House should do. I hope that it is what we do.

Mr. Maclennan: The hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing), in moving amendment No. 2, was in a sense usurping the position of official Opposition Front Benchers. I make no complaint about that, for she moved, her amendment with some passion which commended itself to the Committee. However, it might be thought that an amendment of such importance—if it is to be treated with great seriousness, as it should be—should have been moved by an official Opposition Front Bencher. After the pleas that we have heard today from Conservative Back Benchers for consensus in reform and for cross-party agreement, it would have been appropriate to have had in the Chamber for this debate the Leader of the Opposition.
Let us be quite clear about it: the obstacle to arriving at consensual reform of the upper House has been the Leader of the Opposition and his predecessors as leader of the Conservative party. The right hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. MacGregor) knows perfectly well that he served in a Government who set their face rigorously against any reform of the upper House. He knows perfectly well also that the right hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major) had no intention at any time in his premiership of even entering into serious discussions on the matter.
I regard it as the utmost hypocrisy for Conservative Members to suggest that, either before or since the general election, there was ever the remotest chance of getting


any agreement from the Conservative party on reform of the upper House. Indeed, on the very day that it became public knowledge that Lord Cranborne had entered into some consultation with the Prime Minister and his colleagues, it was clear that the Leader of the Opposition was completely at odds with his party in the upper House and was seeking to stir up those in another place into outright opposition to the Government's proclaimed intentions for reform of the second Chamber.

Sir Patrick Cormack: That is a travesty of what happened. The Leader of the Opposition said only that he would not be party to a deal that would in any way inhibit proper examination and scrutiny of the Bill. We have always made it quite plain that amendment No. 2 would make a very bad Bill marginally better. For that reason, we shall be happy to support it in the Lobby. However, it was not part of a behind-the-stairs deal. The Leader of the Opposition made that plain, and I am happy to make it plain again now.

Mr. Maclennan: I am absolutely clear about what happened on that occasion. It was quite clear that the Leader of the Opposition was making a very unsuccessful attempt to stir up his colleagues in another place, to treat this measure as a battering ram against the Government's overall programme of constitutional reform and to tie up the upper House in dealing not only with this Bill, but with the rest of its business, thereby stopping proper government and legislation.

Mrs. Dunwoody: The right hon. Gentleman seems to be enunciating an interesting theory. Is he saying that Members of the House of Commons should not, in common with their colleagues in another place—and irrespective of party—have the right to delay the passage of legislation?

Mr. Maclennan: No. The power of delay is a well-understood tool of opposition. However, one cannot pretend to be engaged in the proper scrutiny of legislation while making it plain to colleagues in another place that one is intent on destroying the business of the Government. In particular, one cannot pretend to be embarked on an engagement of consensual politics to reform the constitution. No consent was sought, and none would have been given.

Mr. Tyrie: It would be interesting if the Liberal Democrats, for once, could behave according to their principles. They have a bevy of policy documents that show that they have been in favour of an elected second Chamber for decades. However, they are now acting as if they are part of the Government Front Bench and attacking the Conservative Opposition, who are trying to have a serious discussion of stage 2.

Mr. Maclennan: Unlike the Conservative party in opposition, we engaged in dialogue with the Labour party about the reform of the constitution because we took the view that there should be cross-party agreement. Any suggestion that we made on that subject to members of the Conservative party was treated with total contempt. They were not interested in doing business, and they

wanted to continue their partisan view that everything in the constitutional garden was as it should be and should be left alone.
The Liberal Democrats want to get rid of the hereditary peers as part of a move towards a proper, legitimate and democratic second House which exercises real powers over the Executive. The Bill is an important step in that direction. The amendment seeks to pick up on a deal that may be struck in another place, and seeks to embarrass members of the Government by putting them through the hoop of voting against it tonight and perhaps voting for it later. It is a perfectly transparent exercise in party politics and has nothing to do with high-minded principles about consent. It is a squalid little partisan deal.

Mr. Letwin: The right hon. Gentleman is known to take the constitution seriously and has thought about it a lot. Is he genuinely advancing to the Committee the proposition that it is appropriate for the Government to make a major change to the constitution, in terms of the interim House, depending on their lordships' compliance with the Government's programme?

Mr. Maclennan: It is entirely open to this Chamber to participate in the debate on the amendment at a later stage if, in the upper House, it becomes apparent that it is an acceptable proposition that will be agreed consensually as a step on the way to full reform of the upper House. That remains to be seen. Nothing has come from the other place yet—nor could it have done, as the matter has not been debated—that gives us any certainty that the so-called deal will stick. It apparently enjoyed the support of Lord Cranborne and a number of his friends. Evidently, it did not enjoy the support of the Leader of the Opposition, who promptly sacked Lord Cranborne for having agreed to the deal.
It must be said that, whether Lord Cranborne's view of these matters or the view of the Leader of the Opposition, as it may now be, prevails in the upper House is something about which we can only speculate. We have no idea of the Leader of the Opposition's view of the merits of the deal, and that is why I say that the amendment should have been moved from the Opposition Front Bench. We would then have known where he stood. He has been running around like a frightened rabbit throughout the debate. Far from giving the country a lead, he has disappeared to the United States to do business with American Republicans.

Mrs. Laing: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way and for his kind remarks earlier. Is it not for the Prime Minister to give a lead to the country? If the amendment is going to be accepted and become Government policy, should not the amendment have been tabled by the Government and not by me, as an Opposition Back Bencher?

Mr. Maclennan: It could not have been made clearer that this is not the Government's policy. The matter has been set out in transparent language in the White Paper and the Leader of the House has spelt the position out. The proposal cannot become law without being debated on the Floor of the House. If an amendment is carried in another place, it will come back here for our consideration. Any talk of this Chamber being bypassed is wide of the mark.
As for prejudging what may be decided in another place, I do not know what the attitude will be. It is clear from the White Paper that the Government do not regard the amendment as the best policy. It is an incremental change that would remove approximately nine tenths of the hereditaries. The Government regard it as a step towards the fulfilment of their manifesto commitment to remove all the hereditary peers. It is not a satisfactory step and I should not dream of defending it as such. It is a most unfortunate step back from the manifesto commitment and I hope that it may not commend itself in another place as the way ahead, because it will create many anomalies. Perhaps the best advantage of the amendment for those of us who want a truly legitimate upper House is that the situation will be so patently anomalous that the process of bringing forward stage 2 will be accelerated.
Stage 2 is in the Government's mind. That is not hidden from the public; it is set out in the White Paper. They have made it plain that that is why they have asked the royal commission to report early—by the end of this year. They want to bring the measures for the reform of the upper House before the country before the next election.

Mr. Grieve: I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman is familiar with the Minister's comments on Second Reading that the Government only hoped that proposals might be before this Chamber by the next general election.

Mr. Maclennan: It is not possible at this stage to do more than offer a hope. The Government have generously put the possible shape of the second phase of the reformed House into the hands of a Conservative former Minister, as chairman of the royal commission. I have the greatest respect for him and I am sure that he will do his best, but we cannot do more than hope that his best will be good enough, that the rest of the commission will accept it or that it will produce a consensus around which this Chamber will be prepared to unite.
Those are matters for the future. The amendment has been tabled not to bridge a gulf or to open new lines of communication between the two sides, but to dig deeper trenches. That is an inappropriate way to approach the reform of the upper House. We need to look for common ground and build on it. The Government have signalled that by their willingness to listen to Lord Cranborne's proposal. There is nothing cynical about that approach. It is straightforward and open. For that reason, it should be welcomed.

Dr. Starkey: As I have listened to this debate, I have come to the view that Conservative Members are increasingly losing their grip on reality. We reached the positive nadir—it might be the acme—when the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing) declared with passion that it was absolutely vital for our constitution that
the Lord Great Chamberlain and the Earl Marshal shall be members of the House of Lords",
as the amendment says. If that is not losing grip on the reality outside Parliament, I do not know what is.

Mrs. Laing: Let me correct the impression that the hon. Lady has just given. Of course I did not say that that was vital. I said that it was vital that we should have a chance to discuss the amendment. I know what is in

the amendment, and it does not help the argument if she and the right hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Mandelson) try to spin it differently from what it actually says.

Dr. Starkey: I have quoted from the amendment, and it is for others to take a view. I want to take the charitable view—that the amendment has some logic behind it and was not tabled simply to play party games. I want to try to dissect that logic.
Through days of listening to Conservative Members on Second Reading and now in Committee, I understand that their argument is that the value of the House of Lords as a revising Chamber resides in its independence and in its representativeness. The latter concept is difficult to sustain, but I will take it as read. The next step of logic is that the hereditary peers are the key contributors to that independence and that representativeness, so the proposed transitional Chamber would be worse than the current Chamber.
Conservative Members argue either that we should stick with the House of Lords as it is or, as in the amendment, that we should have a halfway House between the present arrangements and the transitional Chamber that retains a considerable number, but not all, of those independent and representative hereditary peers. That, as I have divined it, is the logic behind the amendment.

Mr. Swayne: As the hon. Lady describes the amendment, it is clearly remiss in a number of respects and is not very persuasive. Can she tell me, then, whether she will vote for it tonight and whether she will vote for it when it comes back from the Lords?

Dr. Starkey: Let me put the hon. Gentleman out of his misery. I will not vote for it tonight, because I want the House of Lords to be replaced in the first instance by a transitional Chamber, and I hope that, if the Members of the House of Lords are as independent as we have repeatedly been assured by Conservative Members, they will also see the value of the Government's arguments and back us up by going for a transitional Chamber.
If, however, the peers insist on protecting their interests and table another amendment, I and other hon. Members will have to take a pragmatic decision. Frankly, although I would like to go the whole hog, I would prefer, if the choice is between going part way or not at all, to move towards the reform of the House of Lords and go part way. I am astonished that Conservative Members find that such a difficult line to follow, especially when most people outside the Committee would regard it as an intensely sensible and pragmatic way forward.
As I have been so kind as to set out the logic behind the amendment, I will now try to demolish it. The independence argument is clearly ridiculous. The hon. Member for Epping Forest tried on Second Reading to extend the notion even further by saying that peers were made all the more independent by the fact that they were free to change their party allegiance. I have news for the hon. Lady—all Members of this Chamber have the freedom to change their party allegiance. Of course, at the next general election, they would not be selected by the party that originally selected them, but as the hon. Lady knows, at least one Member of this place was


elected as a member of one party and is now, very sensibly, sitting as a member of another party. Is he independent or is he now a member of the parliamentary Labour party?

Mrs. Laing: Does the hon. Lady not appreciate the big difference between Members of the House of Lords, who have never given a promise to people who elected them about which party they represent, and Members of the Commons, who go before the electorate as representatives and upholders of the principles of one party or another, and then cross the Floor? There is a difference in duty and in honesty.

Dr. Starkey: Precisely—there is a difference in duty. The hon. Lady has just made my point for me.
The other point about hereditary peers that is always rehearsed is that huge numbers of them are independent, and Conservative peers are somehow included among them. However, most people outside Parliament would understand only Cross-Bench peers to be independent. I concede that there are a considerable number of Cross-Bench peers in the present House of Lords, but the hon. Member for Epping Forest knows perfectly well that at least 23 per cent. of Members of the transitional House will be Cross Benchers. If additional appointments are made, that percentage will be a minimum, not a maximum. Those Cross Benchers will be in the hands of the Appointments Commission, rather than remaining in the hands of the Prime Minister. The hon. Lady's argument that the transitional House will be less independent than the current House is, therefore, entirely fallacious.
The Conservatives appear to be rather recent converts to the notion of preserving the independence of the House of Lords because, even though the previous two Conservative Governments had a considerable majority in the Lords, they obviously did not feel that it was big enough, so they created more Conservative peers than they created Liberal or Labour peers. I shall take no lessons from the hon. Member for Epping Forest and her colleagues about their commitment to independence.
The second part of the Conservatives' logical argument is that the hereditary peers are more representative than other Members of the House of Lords and that removing them would reduce the representative nature of that House. Those arguments have been rehearsed endlessly in the debate, and I shall not repeat the figures, but simply point out that hereditary peers are extraordinarily unrepresentative. They are the most unrepresentative part of the House of Lords. Removing the huge superfluity of people representing the Tory party and land management and farming interests, ipso facto, makes the transitional House more representative. That is not to mention, of course, the hereditary peers' rather large gender imbalance.
I do not want to prolong the debate because it is getting late. I simply reiterate that moving from the House of Lords to a transitional Chamber is an absolutely crucial first step in reforming the Lords and setting up a more democratic structure. It is particularly important that hereditary peers have no part in shaping the final House of Lords, which is why they need to be removed from the transitional Chamber.

Mr. Gale: Earlier, the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. McWalter) said—I paraphrase only slightly—that the debate was about getting rid of 600 deadbeats from the other House. The implication was clearly that the deadbeats are the hereditary peers. A significant number of Members of the other House are relatively inactive for many reasons: some do not live in this country and some are suffering from extreme old age. Some of the elderly Members of the other House are very active, but some are not and most of those are not hereditary peers but life peers. A significant number of hereditary peers play an extremely active role in the life and work of the House of the Lords.
When those men and women are removed from their tasks—and it will be a matter of when, as this measure will be steamrollered through—there will not be enough peers left to do the job and scrutinise the legislation.

Mr. Gordon Prentice: Tell them to turn up then.

Mr. Gale: The hon. Gentleman makes a comment from a sedentary position, but his party has complained bitterly that the Government have been defeated on a number of occasions by the upper House. If he looks at the voting record in the upper House, he will find that it is the Labour life peers who have not turned up to vote and who have let his party down. I do not think that he is on very strong ground.

Mr. Prentice: The Sunday newspapers tell us that the hon. Gentleman's former colleague John Moore, who at one time was a Conservative Secretary of State for Transport, was ennobled in 1992 and has yet to make his maiden speech. How does the hon. Gentleman justify that?

Mr. Gale: The point that the hon. Gentleman has missed is that it is Labour Back Benchers in the other place who have failed to turn up. That is why the Government have been defeated so often in the House of Lords.

Mrs. Beckett: I think that the hon. Gentleman must know—or should know—that he is being extremely unfair, and I shall tell him why. First, even if 100 per cent. of our Members in the House of Lords arrive, the Conservative party need only get out a much smaller percentage of its Members there to defeat us.
Secondly, and most significantly, it is a sad fact that quite a high percentage of our life peers in the House of Lords are in the later stages of their lives, and many are quite frail. We continue to have to try to bring them in, although they are not able to attend as often as they would wish. The reason for that situation is that a succession of Conservative Prime Ministers—especially Lady Thatcher and the right hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major) —absolutely refused to allow the creation of younger Labour life peers to replace those who died. So the hon. Gentleman is making a very unfair point at the expense of people who show great devotion to the House of Lords.

Mr. Gale: The right hon. Lady knows perfectly well that, according to the simple mathematics of the House of Lords, there are enough able Labour life peers to have carried the Government's business on every occasion. However, she has helped me to make my point, which is that it is not the hereditary peers who do not attend the upper House, but the elderly life peers.
I yield to no one in my respect for some of those elderly people. I worked long and hard over a number of years with one gentleman, the late Lord Houghton of Sowerby, a member of the right hon. Lady's party. He made a major contribution to the upper House until late into his 90s, when he was still introducing legislation, so I will take no lessons from the right hon. Lady on that matter. However, the sums make it clear that, had Labour life peers turned up to vote, they could have carried the Government's business—yet they failed to do so.
Once the hereditary peers are abolished, the work of the upper House during the interim period—that is, for the five, 10, 15, 20 or 50 years that it is in place—will have to be done by people appointed. They will either be Tony's cronies, or they will be created along the lines suggested by Lord Weatherill and set out in the amendment.
What we are discussing tonight is how we are to get from where we are now—which works—to an interim arrangement, which must also work. We are also discussing who will do the job in the interim period. When the time comes to vote on the amendment—later tonight, or tomorrow—I shall support it, not because it is particularly good, but because, in the words that my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack) used earlier, it makes a bad Bill just a little less bad. On Third Reading, I shall oppose the whole sorry charade.
I asked the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) how he was going to vote. Like every other honourable Labour Member, he equivocated, because he knows that the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) is right. The Bill is a charade and a farce, but the Government Whips will cow their sheep into the No Lobby to vote against this amendment. The Bill will then go to, and be passed by, the other place; when it comes back here, Labour Members will bleat their way through the Aye Lobby. That is what will happen. It is two-faced, and it is dishonourable. The tactic is fundamentally dishonest.
On amendment No. 18, I want to know who will be put in to fill the gaps that we all agree will have to be filled in the interim upper House. Who will be allowed to speak? Labour Members have voted that working hereditary peers may not even speak, never mind vote.
I intervened earlier on an excellent speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth), and I referred to Baroness Wharton, the deputy chairman of the all-party animal welfare group and an extremely hard-working Cross-Bench peer. Some Labour Members are members of that all-party group, and they know as well as I do of the work that Baroness Wharton has done in recent years. She worked throughout the summer recess, when others were away, to design a puppy farming Bill that many Labour Members would wish to see pass through the House and through the other place. She worked long and hard, too, to take Lord Houghton's Dangerous Dogs (Amendment) Act 1997 through the House of Lords before it came to the House of Commons.
Baroness Wharton has to earn a living, yet she finds the time to work on legislation in Parliament as a Cross-Bench peer. She will no longer be allowed to speak because Labour Members voted, about two hours ago, to say that she cannot.

Angela Smith: The hon. Gentleman challenged me on this point earlier, and it is a shame that he was not here for the beginning of the debate when he would have heard points made by some of my hon. Friends. He has spoken of the work that Baroness Wharton has done, and my hon. Friends and I—I am vice-chair of the animal welfare group—have made it clear that the Bill to remove the voting rights of hereditary peers is no slur on the character of any work undertaken by hereditary peers. Rather, it is about the legitimacy of those peers to undertake work at all.

Mr. Gale: It is true that I was not here for the early part of the debate because I was engaged in other parliamentary business. However, one of the advantages of televising the Chamber is that we are able to hear speeches in our rooms. I therefore heard much of what was said earlier, and I waited to see how the hon. Member for Basildon (Angela Smith) would vote. Would she allow Baroness Wharton to carry on speaking? She voted no. [Interruption.]
I know that it is uncomfortable to hear about real people and the real work that they do in the real House of Lords. However, let me name a couple more real people. The third Viscount Chelmsford, for example, is a hereditary peer, and the director of the European Informatics Market. He plays an important role in the upper House in pressing the cause for the development of information technology, both in and out of Parliament.
The second Baron Renwick is a member of the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology. He is also secretary of the Parliamentary Information Technology committee, and he speaks for the British Dyslexia Association. He, too, is a hereditary peer.
I am glad to see that the Minister of State, Lord Chancellor's Department—the Lord Chancellor's spokesman on earth—has come to the Committee. I wanted to say something to him earlier, and now I have the chance. The Minister knows those two hereditary peers very well. In a former incarnation, he took a particular interest in information technology, and he knows—if no one else on the Labour Benches does—just how great was the role played by those two working hereditary peers in the parliamentary development of information technology. Yet the Minister has voted, and has recommended to his hon. Friends to vote, to ensure that those peers should not be allowed to speak in the other place. If those people, who work for little or no money, other than an attendance allowance, are not going to be allowed to speak, who is?
Is the Labour party going to do the job properly? Is it going to have the guts to do what the right hon. Member for Chesterfield, with whom I agree, would have it do? Is it going to persuade its turkeys in another place to vote for Christmas, to abolish the House of Lords and vote for a wholly elected upper Chamber, or is it going to continue with this charade, which is nothing short of vandalism of our constitution?

Dr. Stephen Ladyman: The hon. Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale) speaks with


great passion. He talks about the mathematical possibility of the Labour party occasionally being able to carry the day if it bussed in all its hereditary peers. He completely overlooks the fact that the 3:1 Conservative majority in the other place would mean that the Conservatives could simply bus in more than we could. He forgets that 300 hereditary Conservative peers were bussed in to carry the Maastricht treaty, which he now says is wrong. He forgets that we could not pass legislation against fox hunting in this Parliament because of the hereditary peers, and that is a campaign for which he has fought all his political life.
In the few moments that remain before 10 pm, I want to refer briefly to the comments made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn). I have been a member of the Labour party for a very long time. In 1987, I attempted to stand for Parliament. I can remember members of the Labour party, who were then very much its leaders and spokespeople, telling us about the policies that Labour was espousing. They included the notion of getting rid of hereditary peerages. I remember being told that the only way we would get that legislation through the House of Lords was by creating 3,000 new Labour peers, that the Conservatives would put every obstacle in our way, and that the House of Lords would not allow itself to be abolished. Now, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield tells me that the Prime Minister is going to be profligate in creating just 91 in order to succeed in doing what he—for it was he—said could be done only with 3,000.

Mr. Benn: It was not 3,000, but 1,000. The difference is that the 1,000 would have abolished the House of Lords; the Prime Minister's appointments will be for a "transitional" stage, which I believe will last for a generation or more.

Dr. Ladyman: My right hon. Friend and I must agree to differ. Time will tell which of us is right. I

believe that the Prime Minister is contemplating the creation of just 91 peers in order to accomplish the abolition of hereditary peerages. I predict that it will be done before this Parliament is out. I am committed to that, as are my right hon. and hon. Friends and our Front-Bench colleagues. It is small compromise that will succeed in getting through legislation that this party never believed it could get through. We have succeeded where others have failed.

Sir Nicholas Lyell: I want to make one point in the minute that remains—[Interruption.] In the minute that remains tonight. The big question that I pose to the Leader of the House is whether the Committee is to be allowed the opportunity seriously to consider what form the interim Chamber should take, pending the findings of the royal commission and the subsequent debate; or whether we are to be landed with the 91-peer amendment, which we are not permitted to debate in this place and which the upper Chamber will be permitted to debate only in the event of good behaviour. There is much talk of democracy on the Labour Benches, but we are not being allowed a full-scale democratic debate on this vital issue.

Amendment No. —

It being Ten o'clock,  THE CHAIRMAN left the Chair to report progress and ask leave to sit again.

To report progress and ask leave to sit again. [Mr. Kevin Hughes.]

Committee report progress; to sit again tomorrow.

ACCOMMODATION AND WORKS COMMITTEE

Ordered,
That Mr. Andrew Dismore be discharged from the Accommodation and Works Committee and Mr. Colin Burgon be added to the Committee.ߞ[Mr. Keith Bradley, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.]

Multiple Sclerosis

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Kevin Hughes.]

10 pm

Mr. Paul Burstow: I am pleased to initiate this debate on the treatment of multiple sclerosis sufferers. I sought it because I believe that the way in which the national health service cares for MS sufferers is a crucial test of some of the Government's NHS reforms. As things stand, MS sufferers get a poor deal from the NHS and, for want of joined-up policy making, taxpayers' money is being spent on sustaining dependency rather than on promoting independence.
I have not sought this debate simply to raise concerns about the postcode rationing of beta-interferon, although I have some questions on that. I hope that the Minister will give the House, and many thousands of people outside, a sense of the Government's approach and attitude to the treatment of MS. In that context, beta-interferon is only part of the picture. There is also a need to address diagnostic services, rehabilitation and nursing services.
MS is a disease of the central nervous system and the most common disabling disease among young adults. This week alone, 50 people will be diagnosed with it. The symptoms often result in problems with mobility, vision, speech and fatigue, and can cause severe pain. One thing is certain about MS: the unpredictability of how it affects people's quality of life.
Because MS is both degenerative and multi-symptomatic, it requires a co-ordinated, multi-agency approach. The sad fact is that services for MS and MS sufferers are subject to wide geographical variation. The variation in availability of service between one postcode and another was confirmed last year in research by the Association of Quality in Healthcare. It found that few health authorities know how much beta-interferon they are funding or how many patients are eligible for treatment in their areas, and showed that most under-prescribe. Even more disturbingly, it revealed that few health authorities work through specific contracts or have detailed service specifications in respect of MS.
All those findings confirm the anecdotal evidence that many hon. Members will have encountered in their casework and surgeries that services are poorly organised and planned. An open letter from a group of 16 distinguished neurologists published in November stated:
We believe that the National Health service has failed to respond adequately to the needs of people with MS and that services to them, with some shining exceptions, are seriously deficient in most parts of the country.
In this short debate I want to cover three issues: prescribing, other services for MS sufferers, and cost-effectiveness, which seems to inform much of the Government's thinking on the issue. Guidance on prescribing beta-interferon was issued by the previous Government to health authorities in 1995. It suggested that it should be prescribed only by neurologists; and that patients should be over 18, have the relapsing-remitting form of the disease, and have had two attacks in the past two years. Finally, patients should be able to walk.
While it is difficult to obtain hard numbers, it is estimated that some 800 people receive beta-interferon. That is about 1.5 per cent. to 2 per cent. of MS sufferers.
As I understand, as many as 10 per cent. of MS sufferers qualify and would benefit from such therapy. Indeed, evidence from trials suggests that treatment with beta-interferon can reduce the number of attacks by up to one third, increase the length of remission and reduce the progression of disability. Beta-interferon is not a cure for MS; nor is it a wonder drug. I acknowledge that it does not necessarily apply to every MS sufferer. However, far too many people who would benefit from it still do not have the opportunity to do so.

Mr. Andrew Lansley: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that a distinguished clinical neurologist thought it appropriate that my constituent, Mrs. Jacky Boswell, should receive beta-interferon, but Cambridge and Huntingdon health authority denied that treatment purely on the grounds that it is not resourced sufficiently to do so?

Mr. Burstow: The hon. Gentleman has drawn attention to a problem that a number of hon. Members encounter. Constituency casework tells us that there are people for whom neurologists have recommended the prescription of the drug for whom—through no fault of their own or of their neurologist, and purely by dint of the fact that the local health service does not have sufficient resources—treatment cannot be provided. As a consequence, as I shall describe later, other parts of the welfare state wind up picking up the cost, and informal carers share the burden.
Prescribing patterns suggest that financial, not clinical, considerations are denying neurologists the freedom to prescribe, as the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) rightly suggested. With the recent European licensing of beta-interferon to treat the more severe secondary progressive form of the disease, the need for clarity and direction from the Government is more urgent than ever. As Stephen Thornton, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said,
To avoid the charge of postcode prescribing, we need urgent Government clarification.
We need Government clarification not just of current prescribing for relapsing-remitting MS, but of future prescribing policy.
A series of statements and so on by Ministers has begun to call into question the efficacy of beta-interferon. Indeed, in November, the then Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Darlington (Mr. Milburn), said that the Department would be
commissioning new research into the appropriate usage of beta-interferon, and we will be issuing new guidelines before too long to ensure greater national consistency in the uptake of the drug."—[Official Report, 10 November 1998; Vol. 319, c. 132.]
I am sure that hon. Members on both sides of the House would welcome that, and hope that that guidance is on its way. In a subsequent written answer in response to a question that I tabled, however, the Minister said that there are still many unanswered questions about the drug's appropriate use.
In a letter to the hon. Member for North-East Derbyshire (Mr. Barnes) in January, which I am grateful


to have had the opportunity to see, the present Minister of State said:
There are still continuing doubts over the clinical and cost-effectiveness of the drug arising from soundly based clinical trials. Proposals for a national clinical trial into Beta-interferon are at an advanced stage, and a final decision will shortly be taken".
Those statements raise some questions. I hope that the Minister can give some answers.
When will the new guidelines be issued, especially for the secondary progressive condition? Will beta-interferon continue to be available, albeit under the unsatisfactory regime, outside the rules of the proposed national trial? How long will the national trial last before new guidelines are published, in order that there may be greater consistency, which the Minister promised at the Dispatch Box only in November?
Secondly, as well as mapping the patchwork nature of prescribing, the Association of Quality in Healthcare study found inadequate planning, lack of consultation and poor management information—indeed, 46 per cent. of health authorities do not appear to contract for MS diagnostic, treatment or rehabilitation services. It is little more than a lottery whether a patient sees a neurologist who has specialist knowledge to deal with MS. That lack of planning cries out for a national service framework. Will the new National Institute for Clinical Excellence be given an early task: to consider MS services in the round—not just prescription—so that MS sufferers can be certain that they will receive a good standard of service no matter where they live?
The third issue is cost-effectiveness, which Ministers have often raised in their answers. Most assessments of the cost-effectiveness of beta-interferon examine only the health-related costs, but such a narrow approach overlooks the social care, social security and other costs that arise. Indeed, a study published in the pharmacoeconomics journal found that the bulk of the costs of managing MS in this country were borne by social services and general practitioners, not the health service. That pattern was also found in work done by the South and West Devon health authority. A study there compared the use of health and social care resources for two groups of MS patients.

Mr. John Burnett: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Burstow: I had better not. I have already given way once.
The study compared a group of MS patients who were being treated with beta-interferon with a group to whom the drug had been refused. In just one of a number of case studies dealt with in that detailed research, it was found that the lost tax revenues and the increased benefit payments accounted for about £10,000. A further £2,500 was being allocated to cover social care costs during relapses.
The conclusion of the study was clear. The researchers stated:
The study has been concerned to show that although the cash purchase price"—

of beta-interferon—
has proved an initial barrier to some potential NHS purchasers, when other factors are considered, the true 'cost' of the drug can be viewed in a more advantageous light. These include the quality of life of the patient during treatment, the impact on the use of resources in hospital and in the community, the effect of the disease on the families and friends of MS patients and the economic cost to the community as a whole.
I hope that in future, when work on the subject is done by the Department, these other issues will be taken into the equation. I hope that the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, which I understand will consider cost-effectiveness as part of its work, will take that wider view, rather than just a narrow health-related cost view. On the basis of the evidence that I have seen, and according to those who are far better informed than I am, it is clear that the drug can make a difference.
I sought the debate tonight because of a number of cases that came to my attention in my constituency. I expect that other hon. Members are present to listen to the debate because of cases that have been brought to their attention. In preparation for the debate, I spoke on Friday last week to the chair of our local MS society to discuss some of the issues of concern to its members.
The local group has 140 members, including 90 sufferers of MS, none of whom are prescribed beta-interferon. Indeed, I was told that at least two had been told that they are eligible under the existing guidance, but that no money is available to pay for the therapy. They went on to say that the problem was not just the drug, but the lack of planning by the health authority and the lack of awareness of the everyday experiences of MS sufferers.
Because there is inadequate provision in the health service to fund the treatment, the cost ends up being borne in other parts of the welfare state. In effect, we are funding dependency, rather than shifting the resources to fund greater independence.
MS wrecks lives. It robs people of their independence. The NHS response is unplanned, unco-ordinated and underfunded. MS sufferers want to know whether the 1995 guidelines will be properly funded and properly enforced around the country, so that we do not have the rationing of drugs by postcode. MS patients want decent diagnostic and rehabilitation services. The number of people who are told that they suffer from MS and who are left to try to lead their lives without any support is a scandal. We must ensure that there is decent support for people's rights of employment and so on. Above all, people want some certainty in their lives. I hope that, tonight, the Minister can begin to give MS sufferers greater certainty that the Government are committed to their care, treatment and rehabilitation.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. John Hutton): I congratulate the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow) on his good fortune in securing a debate on this timely and important subject. I express my gratitude to him for his thoughtful and clearly well-researched comments. I am sure that he will not object if I begin by putting some of his comments about resources in the right perspective. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that, over the next three years, an additional £21 billion will be spent on the national health service. That is a 4.7 per cent. real-terms increase


in NHS spending. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be aware also that the health authority in his constituency will be receiving an additional £25 million in funding next year. That is an increase of more than 6 per cent.
I say to the hon. Gentleman and to other hon. Members who are present—I am pleased to see so many right hon. and hon. Members taking an interest in the debate—that, within those overall budget figures, we expect expenditure on new drug treatments to increase significantly. We fully expect that a greater share of NHS resources will be spent on good-value new drug treatments over the next three years. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not mind if I decline to accept his criticism of the Government record on investing in the NHS. I think that we can safely withstand any attack from the Liberal Democrats.
As the hon. Gentleman said, multiple sclerosis is a chronic, disabling disease which affects the central nervous system, causing damage to the nerves in the brain and spinal cord. It often strikes people when they are young. It is understood to arise from scarring and inflammation of the myelin sheath. This acts as insulation to the nerve fibres and helps conduct impulses through the central nervous system. When that happens, disabilities can vary from impairment of speech, vision and movement to continence problems or even complete paralysis. Because of its prolonged course, and the disability that can result from it, it is extremely distressing for those who suffer from the disease, and their families. It often has a profound effect on the lives of others in the family as well. We estimate that multiple sclerosis affects, as the hon. Gentleman rightly said, 80,000 to 90,000 people in the United Kingdom.
The disease course in MS is unpredictable. People most often present with relapsing-remitting MS, in which relapses or acute attacks of neurological disability are followed by periods of remission. Later, as chronic problems accumulate, the disease may become more progressive, with more acute relapses. Some people have the progressive form of the illness right from the start. Management of MS therefore involves a number of things, including treatment of relapses caused by increased disease activity, a proper care programme to minimise and control specific problems such as spasticity, bowel and bladder problems and fatigue, and specific treatment aimed at influencing the disease's progression.
People with MS have a wide range of health and other needs. These needs, particularly for health care, will nearly always change over time. Patients with long-term conditions such as MS require different levels of support and health care. An annual approach to their health care is not always appropriate. Our White Paper "The new NHS" presents us with good opportunities to develop innovative care approaches for people with long-term care needs, including those with multiple sclerosis. In the White Paper, we made clear our ambitions for a modern, dependable service that will provide first-class treatment and care for all those who need it. I want to make it clear at the outset that that applies just as much to those suffering from MS as to anyone else with long-term health care needs.
The recent consultation exercise on arrangements for long-term service agreements which we proposed in guidance on "Commissioning in the New NHS" will ensure that commissioning arrangements cover longer time scales of between three to five years instead of at present only one. In this guidance, our proposals for

pathways of care will, where appropriate, link primary care, secondary care and social care, to which the hon. Gentleman referred. I believe that this is a better approach for people with long-term conditions such as MS. Discussions about these care pathways will involve users and carers as well as health professionals. However, we need to be realistic about making changes and we do not expect these new arrangements to happen overnight for all services, but to be developed on a rolling programme that replaces annual contracts.

Mr. Burstow: Listening to the Minister's speech, it is quite difficult to find the appropriate point at which to intervene. That being so, it may well be that he will be taking up the point that I am about to make. However, I seek clarification.
I referred to the fact that 46 per cent. of health authorities have no contracts and no clarity in their planning of delivery of services for MS sufferers. Is the Minister able to say specifically whether the National Institute for Clinical Excellence will be asked to undertake work in this area and provide a service framework to guide the pathways that he was talking about?

Mr. Hutton: I have some sympathy with the hon. Gentleman in respect of knowing what is the right place to intervene during an Adjournment debate, because it usually takes a bit of time to reach the specific points that have been raised. I can assure him that I will come on to the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, and—if he is okay with this—I shall refer to those issues when I reach that point in my remarks. The specific figure that he raised—that of 46 per cent. of health authorities not having any strategic approach to managing multiple sclerosis patients—is not one that I am familiar with. If he would like to make further representations to me, I should be happy to look into that.
We emphasised in the guidance that care pathways would be developed to cover a range of preventive, diagnostic, palliative, rehabilitative and supporting care components of an integrated programme of care. That applies in particular to long-term medical conditions where, following accurate and timely diagnosis, patient care will be managed outside an acute setting. That is likely to be the case for many neurological conditions and, given their complex nature, we plan to develop, with the help of the neurological voluntary organisations, a compendium of good practice on the commissioning of neurological services.
On services for people with MS, the hon. Gentleman will be aware that, last year, the Multiple Sclerosis Society published a survey of multiple sclerosis provision in England and a symptom management survey. The first survey was designed to establish how commissioners approach provision of MS services and to build a picture of service provision in England. The second looked at the experiences of a group of MS patients.
Under the present system, the organisation of health services, including services for people suffering from MS, and the manner in which they are delivered, are, quite rightly, matters for local health authorities. The move to new commissioning arrangements will achieve improvements in services for people with conditions such as MS. Longer-term agreements, reflecting dialogue


between clinicians and focusing on health improvement and quality objectives, will increase the emphasis on programmes of care that cross the traditional boundaries to meet patients's needs best.
The White Paper "The New NHS" also underlines our commitment to working in partnership, which fully includes the voluntary sector. We are pleased to be supporting the MS Society in particular, under the section 64 scheme of grants, in respect of its emergent therapies project. The MS Society, together with the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, have developed comprehensive guidance on standards for the provision of health care for people with MS. The society is offering formal recognition, as a benchmark of good practice, to centres and services that meet these standards. We very much welcome that helpful initiative.
Multiple sclerosis can have a profound effect on family life and, in particular, on the lives of people caring for family members or friends with MS. The Government recognise the vital role that carers play, which is why we announced a substantial new policy package for carers last week. That package will mean better information, better support and better care for carers. Families with a member suffering from MS should be able to cope more easily as a result of the additional help and support that they will now receive.
The NICE agitated the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam quite extensively. Sometimes—MS is an example—there are few specific treatments available to treat a disease or condition. That means that health professionals need to arrange care packages that support, rather than cure or ameliorate, a condition. In such situations, there is naturally a great deal of interest in emerging therapies, but it can be difficult for individual clinicians and commissioners to make decisions about new therapies as they become available and to make themselves aware of all the pertinent evidence.

Mr. Kenneth Clarke: I am grateful to the Minister for his courtesy in giving way. He is giving some helpful general information, but he has touched on the immediate point that is affecting a lot of people across the country. When an experienced consultant wants to prescribe specific treatment for a patient, and he thinks that that patient will benefit, is it justifiable for the health authority to refuse to finance all patients for whom he has prescribed? Is it right to restrict on financial grounds treatments recommended by experienced consultants?

Mr. Hutton: The right hon. and learned Gentleman will not be surprised to hear that I will come on to that part of my speech in a few minutes and I will deal specifically with the important point that he has made.
That is why we are setting up—

Mr. Burnett: Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Hutton: No, I will not. I have only six minutes left in which to respond to a number of points.
That is why we are setting up the National Institute for Clinical Excellence. The proposals for a new national institute mean that, for the first time, patients and NHS staff will be able to turn to a single authoritative source of clinical and cost-effectiveness advice.
Internal markets and the postcode lottery that they inevitably created were never an acceptable way to run a health service. NICE guidance will provide a common effectiveness foundation for the NHS to inform and assist decision making about care at all levels—national, local and individual. By identifying which new developments will most improve patient care, it will help spread good value new treatments across the NHS. That, in turn, will promote and encourage successful innovation and, by sorting out the wheat from the chaff, it will be able to target treatments on patients who will benefit most, as well as protect patients from outdated and ineffective treatment.
Guidance from the NICE does not remove the need to take account of genuine, good clinical reasons for tailoring the care provided to individual patients. That will always be an issue to discuss with the individual patient in the consulting room. Better-informed patients and professional staff can only help lead to better-quality care for everyone, wherever they live.
The hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam expressed concern over the availability of beta-interferon, both for patients with the relapsing-remitting form of the disease and for patients with the secondary progressive form. We need to be clear that complex issues are involved. There is certainly evidence that beta-interferon can benefit some patients, but it appears that only a small proportion of those receiving treatment benefit from beta-interferon and it is impossible to predict which patients are likely to benefit. That is why many professionals involved in providing or commissioning health care are genuinely uncertain whether beta-interferon treatment represents a responsible use of NHS resources.
Those are precisely the sort of issues that we have set up the new National Institute of Clinical Excellence to advise on. I am happy to confirm that, subject to the outcome of consultation on the discussion document that we issued last week, we are minded to refer beta-interferon treatment to the NICE as one of its priority tasks. I hope, therefore, that by later this year we shall have clear, authoritative advice on the role of beta-interferon in the treatment of patients with this most distressing condition— [Interruption.] I thought that the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) was seeking to intervene again.

Mr. Clarke: I simply wanted to say that I am glad that the Minister got around to dealing with that point. I thought that he would not, but I am grateful for what he said.

Mr. Hutton: I do not want to turn this into a love-in, but I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman as well.
Many people are aware, too, of the use of a rather older drug by patients with MS—cannabis. The Government receive a lot of correspondence from people with MS about their problems with pain and how cannabis seems to help alleviate the symptoms. The hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam did not refer to the use of cannabis, but I thought that the House might welcome one or two comments about how we view the use of cannabis in these circumstances.
We are not unsympathetic to the plight of those who cannot be helped by existing medication and I can appreciate the desire of people with severe pain to explore


every avenue to seek relief. However, it would clearly not be of benefit to those people for us to come to a hasty decision on such an important issue. At this stage, there is insufficient evidence to demonstrate the effectiveness of cannabis as a therapeutic agent.
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman appreciates that the Government cannot condone the use of an illicit drug with unproven therapeutic benefit. Under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, possession of cannabis is, and will remain, a criminal offence. However, the report published in 1997 by the British Medical Association, "The Therapeutic Use of Cannabis", surveys the scientific evidence to support the use of cannabis as a medicine. The report shows that there is no reliable, well-conducted research evidence to support the therapeutic use of cannabis.
The hon. Gentleman is probably aware that the Royal Pharmaceutical Society has been working to improve the quality of research methodology for cannabinoids—the unique constituents of cannabis. Any therapeutic effects that cannabis may have are thought to rest in cannabinoids. The society is undertaking work to see whether it can establish that cannabinoids have therapeutic benefits in controlling pain and in improving

the functioning of people with MS. Successful completion of that work will lead to the publication of guidelines to help researchers produce methodologically sound results.
I should have liked to say much more, but unfortunately I shall soon run out of time.
We are providing significant funding in a number of different centres to support research on the treatment of MS in a number of ways. I assure the hon. Gentleman that that support and funding will continue. The fundamental point that he raised, however, concerned NHS resources and their use to support effective programmes for MS. As he would be the first to acknowledge, NHS resources are not limitless. Priorities still have to be set, but we are taking the necessary action to raise the quality of treatment and care to ensure a fair distribution of resources across the NHS and to end the postcode lottery, which became all too common under the previous Administration.
Those actions and many others will help improve the national health service and ensure that it responds more effectively to the needs of patients, including those who suffer from multiple sclerosis.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at half-past Ten o'clock.